A triple car bomb attack killed 18 people and wounded 48 in a mainly Shi'ite district of Baghdad today as the new, Shi'ite-led government met its US sponsors and other foreign leaders in Brussels.
The bombs, apparently in stationary vehicles, struck the Shola neighbourhood after dark, causing widespread damage and casualties on the western district's main street, near a restaurant and close to a car repair workshop, police said.
A journalist saw a burned out building and a handful of wrecked cars near the restaurant bomb. With movement restricted in the capital at night, further details of the incidents and other blasts in the city were not available.
The coordinated nature of the assault, the latest in a wave of insurgent violence that has killed close to 1,200 people including more than 120 US troops since the government was formed two months ago, is a trademark of al-Qaeda Islamists.
Their organisation in Iraq, led by Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, issued a brief Internet statement around the time of the blasts saying: “Stand by shortly for scenes from the Sunnis' reprisal raid.” It was not clear to what it referred.
The same Web site later showed images of fires in three different places and sounds of an explosion and shooting. It was impossible to tell where or when the footage was made.
A fourth blast late today in Baghdad targeted an Interior Ministry convoy, police said, giving no details.