Baghdad apartment blasts cause carnage

Massive explosions at apartments across Baghdad killed at least 34 people and wounded more than 100 today.

The blasts are the latest sign that Iraq’s fragile security could dissolve in the chaos of the country’s unresolved election.

It was the fourth attack with multiple casualties across Iraq in five days, a spate of violence that has claimed more than 100 lives.

Violence has grown as political leaders try to secure enough support to form a government after the March 7 elections failed to produce a clear winner.

Police and medical officials said the death toll was at least 34, and women and children were among those killed.

An Iraqi military spokesman at Baghdad's operations command centre, said the attackers detonated seven blasts across the capital, using home-made bombs and, in one case, a car packed with explosives.

The explosions started at about 9.30am at a residential building in the Shula area of north-west Baghdad.

That was followed by a car bomb about a mile away in an intersection, which damaged nearby buildings.

At 9.45am a bomb left in a plastic bag exploded at a restaurant in the Allawi district downtown, near the government’s Culture Ministry.

College student Ali Hussein, 22, was on the bus to school when one of the Shula bombs exploded. He described “people running in different directions with fear.”

“Cars began to collide with one another in street because of fear,” said Hussein, who fled for home after the blast. “We saw a cloud of fire and black smoke raising from a building at the explosion site, and while we were terrified by this explosion, another one took place.”

Yesterday a Shiite couple and four of their children were gunned down in their home outside Baghdad, while more than 40 were killed on Sunday after suicide attackers detonated three car bombs near embassies in Baghdad.

On Friday gunmen went house-to-house in a Sunni area south of Baghdad, executing 24 villagers.

Baghdad's top military spokesman blamed al Qaida for today's bombings.

Maj. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi, a spokesman for Baghdad’s operations command centre, said: “We are in a state of war with the remains of al-Qaida.”

He said terrorists were trying to disrupt security and the political process in Iraq.