Baghdad death toll rises to 40

It is now thought that up to 40 people have died in today's blasts in Baghdad.

About 10 were killed at the Red Cross HQ in Baghdad and 27 elsewhere, most of them Iraqis but including at least one American soldier, officials said.

At a fifth police station in central Baghdad, officers stopped a suicide bomber before he could detonate his Land Cruiser.

“He was shouting, ‘Death to the Iraqi police! You’re collaborators!”’ said police Sergeant Ahmed Abdel Sattar.

“We feel helpless when see this,” a distraught Iraqi doctor said at the devastated Red Cross offices.

Other Iraqis, meanwhile, were reported dying at the hands of Americans. In Fallujah, 40 miles west of Baghdad, witnesses said US troops opened fire indiscriminately, killing at least four Iraqi civilians, after a roadside bomb exploded as a military convoy passed.