47 killed in Iraq bloodshed (UPDATED)

The deadliest attack was in the main northern city of Mosul when a suicide bomber crashed an explosives-laden truck into an Iraqi army base, sparking a blast that killed 10 soldiers and wounded 30 others, mostly soldiers, officer Major Mohammed Ahmed told AFP. "The bomber smashed the truck through barriers at the entrance to the base and triggered the explosion" at around 7 am (0400 GMT), said Ahmed.

Iraqi and US troops are engaged in a major offensive against Al-Qaeda in Mosul, which according to US commanders is the jihadists’ last urban stronghold in Iraq.

In another brutal attack several armed men travelling in three cars opened fire in the mixed Zafaraniyah neighbourhood of south Baghdad, killing at least six people and wounding 16, security and medical officials said. The gunmen struck as residents were out shopping in the local market. A medic at Ibn Nafis hospital confirmed receiving six bodies of people killed in the attack.

In the third attack, a Katyusha rocket struck a residental building in the largely Shiite Al-Kamaliyah neighbourhood of east Baghdad, killing at least five people and wounding eight, security officials said.

The US military, meanwhile, said its troops raided a "suicide bombing network" in Diyala province northeast of the capital, killing 12 men, six of whom who had shaved their bodies in preparation for becoming human bombs. Spokesman Major Winfield Danielson told AFP that the raid was launched east of the Diyala capital Baquba. When ground forces closed in on the "target building", they came under small arms fire, Danielson said, adding that the troops fired back. Assault weapons, ammunition and grenades were discovered on the site and destroyed. "Six of the terrorists killed had shaved their bodies, which is consistent with final preparation for suicide operations," Danielson said.

Elsewhere in Iraq, four people, including a police officer, were killed in shootings, police said.

The violence on Sunday began with a barrage of mortar fire against the Baghdad Green Zone, the seat of the Iraqi government and the US embassy. Two waves of mortar rounds struck the area between 06:30 am and 10:30 am (0330 GMT and 0730 GMT). They caused no casualties but sent panicked US embassy staff scurrying into bunkers, officials and witnesses said. Black smoke was seen rising from the Green Zone and US attack helicopters were seen circling above the sprawling complex, which once served as Saddam Hussein’s presidential compound.

An employee in the Green Zone, Mohammed al-Dulaimi, who witnessed the second attack, said eight mortar rounds fell near the US embassy complex and two a little distance away in a residential area. "They caused slight damage and one sparked a fire," Dulaimi told AFP. An embassy employee, who would not be named, said staff dashed for the embassy’s bunker after both attacks. "The first attack woke us up and people went rushing to the bunker. It was very frightening. The blasts were very close. Some people were in the showers and arrived with towels around them," she told AFP. "Others were nonchalant and carried on as if nothing had happened. This was the worst attack since last summer, when some buildings in the embassy compound were hit by mortars."

US embassy spokeswoman Mirembe Nantongo told AFP after the first attack that an initial assessment did not indicate any "death or major casualties."
Insurgents and militiamen regularly fire mortars or rockets at the Green Zone, one of the most secure areas in Baghdad, although the frequency has diminished with a general improvement in security across the country. The US military claims that most mortar rounds or rockets that hit the area are manufactured in Iran and fired by "rogue" elements of radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia.

The latest bout of bloodshed comes after a brief lull of violence over the past few days.