Baghdad - Authorities in Iraq say at least 35 people are dead and more than 200 wounded in back-to-back suicide car bomb attacks near embassies in Baghdad on Sunday. The explosions hit the Iraqi capital two days after gunmen killed 30 people in a village just to the south. Iraqi authorities had warned of a possible escalation of violence due to rising tension surrounding a March 7 parliamentary election that produced no clear winner. A police source said at least 21 people had been killed and another 46 wounded. Baghdad security spokesman Major General Qassim al-Moussawi said the toll was six dead and 140 wounded."They were car bombs," Moussawi said. The bombings followed a series of other incidents. Two mortar rounds landed in Baghdad's Green Zone, home to many government offices and the US embassy compound, early on Sunday. A roadside bomb that targeted a police patrol in the capital wounded five officers and five civilians on Sunday. On Saturday night four mortar rounds landed in the Green Zone, and a bomb attached to a civilian vehicle killed two people. Two of Sunday's large blasts were car bombs that blew up in the Mansour district of west-central Baghdad, near the German and Egyptian embassies. The third blast, also a car bomb, occurred near the Iranian embassy, not far from the Green Zone. Live television footage from the scene near the Iranian embassy showed streets filled with smoke and many wounded people. Police vehicles picked up thewounded to transport them to hospital. The Iranian embassy had been a target before. In December 2009, a car bomb exploded in a car park near the facility. Seven months earlier gunmen opened fire on a car carrying three Iranian embassy staff in Baghdad. In April 2007, a car bomb killed one person in a parking lot across the road from the embassy. A day later two car bombs hit the same area, wounding four people. Security forces had predicted the possibility of rising violence after a tight election race that exposed the depth of Iraq's sectarian divide. No political coalition won a majority of seats in parliament, leading to what could be weeks or months of difficult talks to form a government. A cross-sectarian coalition led by former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi won two seats more than a bloc led by Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. Allawi's Iraqiya bloc won with strong support in Sunni-dominated provinces in the north and west, while Maliki won in predominantly Shi'ite provinces in the south. On Friday gunmen invaded the Sunni village of Albusaifi south of Baghdad and killed 24 people, many of them execution-style with a gunshot to the head. Authorities said many of the victims were members of the Sons of Iraq, former insurgents who joined US forces to fight al-Qaeda militants, helping to turn the tide of the war.
