2010-09-19 17:34

BAGHDAD -- The death toll from two car bomb attacks in western and northern Baghdad on Sunday rose to 18, with another 100 people wounded, an Interior Ministry source said.

"Our latest reports said that a total of 18 people were killed and some 100 others were wounded by the two car bomb attacks in Mansour and Kadhmiyah district," the source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

The two blasts occurred almost simultaneously at about 10:15 a. m. local time (0715 GMT). A booby-trapped car detonated near an office of Asiacell mobile company near the al-Liqaa Square in Baghdad's western neighborhood of Mansour, the source said.

Bashar, a Xinhua employee at the scene, said the attack was carried out by a suicide car bomber who struck an office of a mobile phone company Asiacell, destroying the company building and a nearby building.

"I am safe, but it was a very huge blast that collapsed the front part of Asiacell building, and I can see several cars are either charred or badly damaged," Bashar said, adding that the Iraqi security forces sealed off the area and prevented media workers from approaching the scene.

Rawad, a guard at the mobile phone company, who survived the blast unhurt, was crying when he talked to Xinhua saying "many of my colleagues were either killed or wounded."

The interior ministry source told Xinhua that "it is too early in this stage to decide whether any of the two attacks was a suicide car bombing until we get reports by experts who are checking the scenes now."

The other huge explosion occurred near the Addan Square in the Shiite neighborhood of Kadhmiyah in the north of the capital, the ministry source said.

Violence and sporadic high-profile attacks are still common in Iraqi cities as part of recent deterioration in security which shaped a setback to the efforts of the Iraqi government to restore normalcy in the country more than six months after violence-torn Iraq held parliamentary elections on March 7.