UPDATED Iraq: The Latest on Sunday's Embassy Bombings

UPDATE 5 APRIL: Iraq is on high alert, with the toll now at 42 and "hundreds injured". No one has claimed responsibility, although Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari has claimed that the attacks bear the hallmarks of Al Qa'eda in Iraq.

UPDATE 1630 GMT: Iraqi officials are now saying 30 dead and 224 injured. Among those killed are the Egyptian mission's Iraqi head of security and an Iraqi guard at the German embassy.

Iraq Latest: Moqtada al-Sadr Makes A Move

Beyond the three attacks, security forces stopped a bomb-laden car in Masbah, central Baghdad.


UPDATE 1055 GMT: The BBC has a slightly different report, saying that one of the two Mansour bombs was near the Syrian Embassy and --- perhaps more significantly --- the offices of the Iraqi National Congress, headed by controversial politician Ahmad Chalabi.

UPDATE 1050 GMT: An Interior Ministry source says the toll is now 30 dead and 168 wounded.

Three suicide car bombers struck this morning near foreign embassies. Two of the bombs were in the Mansour district near the German and Egyptian Embassies. The third was in central Baghdad near the Iranian diplomatic post.

The three explosions were co-ordinated, beginning at 11:10 a.m. local time (0810 GMT). Roads in the capital have been blocked off.

Latest reports of casualties are between 20 and 30 killed with 55 injured. The figure is almost certain to rise.

Earlier on Sunday, a roadside bomb targeting a police patrol in Baghdad wounded five officers and five civilians. Two mortar rounds landed in the Green Zone, the area of government offices and the US Embassy compound.

Sunday's bombs follow an attack early Saturday that killed 25 people, including members of Iraqi security forces and Sunni "Awakening Councils" allied with the US military, in the village of Albusaifi just to the south of Baghdad. Mortars were fired on the heavily fortified Green Zone later in the day.