国际英语新闻：33 killed in Iraq as bombers target foreign embassies

The blast shattered windows and caused severe damages to the Iranian embassy building as well as the Mansour Hotel which is located on the western bank of the Tigris River and houses some foreign media and Iraqi officials.

Iraqi official television of Iraqia aired live footage of the scene of the explosion in central Baghdad, showing police vehicles and ambulances evacuating the wounded to hospitals, while the security was beefed up as smoke covered the area around the Iranian embassy.

Qassim Atta, spokesman for Baghdad Oprations Command, said the security forces foiled a fourth suicide car bomb attack.

They shot dead the attacker and defused his explosive-laden vehicle in Baghdad central neighborhood of Masbah, he said, adding that the fourth bomber was to target the headquarters of police tasked with protecting foreign embassies.

Atta blamed the al-Qaida network in Iraq for being behind the bloody attacks for political purposes.

Soldiers inspect the site near the Iranian Embassy to Iraq, where suicide car bomb explosions occurred, in Baghdad, capital of Iraq, April 4, 2010. Three suicide car bomb blasts targeted the Iranian Embassy, the consulate office of the Egyptian Embassy and the residence of the German ambassador in Baghdad on Sunday.

"The al-Qaida fingerprints are clear and the goal is to attract media attention and to distort the general situation after the success of democracy in Iraq," Atta said.

Atta called on politicians to speed up the formation of the new government, saying "they have to understand that the faster they form the government, the faster we will defeat the enemy."

The three blasts followed two rounds of mortar attacks on the Green Zone in central the capital.

It was not known whether the mortar attack caused any casualty, but plumes of smoke could be seen rising above the vast area on the west side of the Tigris River.

Also on Sunday, up to three people were killed and some 40 others injured in another deadly car bomb attack near a passing police patrol in the city of Mosul, the capital of Iraq's northern province of Nineveh, a local police source said.

The blast destroyed an old building, burying several people under its debris, along with damaging several buildings and shops at a nearby popular marketplace in the city located some 400 km north of Baghdad, the source said.

Earlier in the day, another 33 people were wounded in Baghdad and the volatile eastern province of Diyala in sporadic bomb and gunfire attacks.