At Least 50 Killed in Baghdad Bombings As Bloody Weekend Continues

Coordinated Attacks Targeted Embassies

At least 50 people were killed and over 200 wounded today when three suicide bombers launched a series of coordinated attacks in the western Mansoor District, peppered with embassies, the latest in a rising number of attacks in the nation.

The attackers were said to have targeted the Iranian, Syrian, and Egyptian embassies, and a fourth attacker was killed before reaching his target. The attack of the Syrian embassy appears to be in some dispute as the bombing was also quite near the German embassy. The fourth attacker was said to be targeting either a government building or a Chaldean church.

The attacks come less than a day after unidentified persons in Iraqi military garb marched into a Sunni controlled neighborhood of Baghdad and killed 24 people, many of them members of the US-backed Sahwa militia.

Overnight mortar shells were also said to have been fired at the heavily fortified Green Zone, though it did not appear to have done serious damage. Violence has been slowly on the rise in Iraq over the past several months.

But the violence seems to have found renewed vigor in the wake of the March election, as tensions fueled by disputes over vote fraud and post-election arrests of victorious MPs boil over. US officials had indicated that the election would be a “stabilizing” event, but the opposite appears to be true, and the possibility of the US drawdown being significantly slowed or even stopped seems to be growing by the minute.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.