at the embassy itself.
The embassy said no member of the staff was killed or injured in the bombing, which was located in the street outside the embassy’s front gate.
Three car bombs exploded Sunday in the Iraqi capital, killing 30 and wounding 224 people. The targets appeared to be foreigners, but the victims were largely Iraqi.
The first car bomb detonated at 11:15 a.m. near the house of the German ambassador in Baghdad’s upscale district of Mansour. The house was destroyed; the nearby Spanish and Syrian embassies were severely damaged.
Two minutes later, a second explosion erupted at the Egyptian consulate in the same district.
The third bomb exploded at about 11:20 a.m. in front of the Iranian embassy gate. The car bomb was also right in front of the Real Estate Bank, which took most of the blast.
Iran’s ambassador to Iraq, Hasan Kazemi-Qomi, said authorities are unsure if the Iranian embassy was the ultimate target.
“The explosion happened at the embassy gate, targeting visitors and Iraqi police,” he said. “There was some damage to the embassy building but no employees were harmed inside.
But the embassy did appear to be the target. The press spokesman at the embassy later said the suicide bomber driving the car had asked the guards to open the embassy gate so he could meet an official, but the bomb exploded before the guards were able to go through the necessary channels to check the authenticity of the request, reported the Iranian Students News Agency (ISNA).
Most of the casualties were clientele or staff at the Real Estate Bank, a source told Aswat al-Iraq. Police reported at least 19 people died from that bomb, two-thirds of those killed in the three Sunday bombings.
Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said, “It looks like [Al-Qaeda].” But he emphasized it was too soon to know for certain who dispatched the suicide bombers.
Iraq is still struggling to form a government four weeks after it held elections March 7. Of the four main blocs in Iraq, none has enough seats to form a parliamentary majority so that a coalition must be formed. Most Iraqis assume the rash of bombings of recent weeks is an effort to disrupt any coalition from being formed.
Ziad, a 47-year-old off-duty army officer, said the Iraq must cement a government to prevent more bombings. “This is very bad—if the political parties do not get an agreement fast, we are going to return to sectarian war,” he said.
Zebari said, “This is a political attack, aimed at derailing the process, sending a message that the terrorists are still in business. Because of the vacuum of forming the next government, they wanted to send that message.”
Al-Qaeda suicide bombers generally come from outside Iraq and try to foment animosity among Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds. They succeeded in causing the groups to wage war among themselves a half decade ago, but most Iraqis now attribute most suicide bombers to Al-Qaeda, so the three groups no longer attack each other after a bombing.
