Attacks continue ahead of Iraqi election
Other attacks were reported north and south of the capital, but the UN election chief said only a sustained onslaught could stop the ballot.
US military officials put the death toll from the dayâs violence at 26, but the number was based on initial field reports and witnesses and Iraqi officials put the toll lower. Iraqi authorities said 12 people were killed in the bombings and another person killed in a drive-by shooting on a Kurdish political party office.
Al-Qaidaâs branch in Iraq said it carried out the first of the dayâs blasts, at the Australian embassy.
A truck packed with explosives went off outside the concrete barriers in front of the embassy about 7am, killing two people and wounding several.
âA lion of monotheism and faith... carried out a martyrdom operation nearby the Australian embassy,â the group al-Qaida in Iraq said in a web statement.
A half hour after the embassy blast, another car bomb killed six at a police station located next to a hospital in eastern Baghdad.
A third car bombing struck at the main gate to an Iraqi military garrison located at a disused airport in central Baghdad. An officer at the Iraqi defence ministry said three Iraqi army troops were killed.
The US military also said a car bomb detonated south west of Baghdad International Airport, killing two Iraqi security guards.
Hours later, another car bomb went off in northern Baghdad around noon near a bank and a Shiâite Muslim mosque. Iraqi police said one person was killed.
US and Iraqi officials had predicted a steady increase in violence in the run-up to the election, in which Iraqi voters will choose a National Assembly and provincial legislatures. Sunni Muslim insurgents have vowed to disrupt the ballot.
Carlos Valenzuela, the chief UN election adviser in Iraq, said the intimidation of electoral workers by guerrillas seeking to derail this monthâs balloting is âhigh and very seriousâ.
