4th Update///Baghdad blast casualties jump to 242

BAGHDAD / IraqiNews.com: The death toll from Sunday’s earlier car bomb blasts near the government buildings in Baghdad rose to 62 and the wounded to 180, a security source said. “Sixty-two people were killed and 180 others wounded when two car bombs driven by suicide attackers went off near the justice ministry and the Baghdad provincial council buildings in central Baghdad,” the source told IraqiNews.com news agency, adding search for the victims under the debris are still going on. “Most of the victims were civilian pedestrians and motorists,” he said. “Employees of the nearby government offices were wounded when the windowpanes were smashed and ceilings destroyed by the powerful explosions,” the source said. He noted that security forces sealed off the al-Jumhouriya bridge and the areas of al-Sanak, al-Ahrar and Bab al-Muadham between Baghdad’s al-Rasafa and al-Karkh intersections. “The wounded were rushed by ambulances and civilian vehicles to the hospitals of al-Kindi, al-Yarmuk and Ibn al-Nafis,” he said. He added that the two explosions set a large number of civilian vehicles ablaze, including some that had passengers aboard. Earlier, a security source said the blasts left fifteen people killed and 32 others wounded, adding the casualties are most likely to rise. “One of the two explosive vehicles went off near the justice ministry while the other near the Baghdad provincial council, both adjacent to the green zone,” the source added. A U.S. embassy source had said two explosions, probably two car bombs, occurred near the Iranian embassy in Baghdad, prompting the nearby U.S. embassy to announce a state of emergency as sirens wailed and the staff ran to hideouts lest other explosions should take place. A series of coordinated attacks struck key government organizations, one of them near the green zone on August 19, leaving more than 100 people killed and more than one thousand others wounded. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki later on sent a message to the UN Secretary General and the UN Security Council demanding the “formation of an international panel to investigate the assaults”. The central Baghdad’s heavily-fortified zone is home to the Iraqi government offices, the headquarters of the Iraqi parliament and the U.S. embassy compound and the British embassy. AmR (I) 1