BAGHDAD, Aug 1 (AFP) - At least four car bombs exploded in quick succession outside churches in Baghdad and the northern city of Mosul, in an apparently targeted assault on Iraq`s influential Christian minority, police said.
The first car was detonated by a suicide bomber near an Armenian church in Baghdad`s upmarket district of Karada, said policeman Haidar Abdul Hussein. Minutes later, a second car bomb exploded near a Catholic Syriac church.
Thick black smoke billowed in the sky above Karada, clearly visible for miles, as ambulances screamed through the streets and firemen battled to contain the blaze.
Officials at the Ibn al-Nafeez hospital said 15 people had been admitted with injuries following the attacks. One of the 15 later died, said Anas Edward, a doctor.
Another police officer at the scene said there were casualties, but was unable to specify how many.
Nervous police officers fired into the air and an AFP correspondent saw the gutted shells of the two cars lying in the streets.
A US military spokesman said "at least four explosions" went off in the central Baghdad area early Sunday evening.
In Mosul, 370 kilometres (230 miles) north of the capital, two car bombs exploded outside a church in the early evening outside the Mar Polis church in the central Mohandessin neighbourhood, said Major Mohammed Omar Taha.
"There are casualties, but we don`t know if anyone was killed," he said.