BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A suicide blast killed five people and wounded 20 others near an Interior Ministry building in central Baghdad on Tuesday, Iraqi police said.
At least three of those killed in the blast, in which the driver of a vehicle detonated explosives outside a ministry forensics office, were police.
After the attacks, ambulances and firefighters rushed to the scene. The ministry building suffered major damage, a Reuters photographer reported.
The bombing came a day after a trio of suicide attacks on well-known Baghdad hotels, two of them hubs for western visitors and journalists in Iraq, killed at least 36 people.
The coordinated bombings, which shattered a seven-week lull in major assaults on government and other supposedly secure targets, fuels tension before Iraq's March 7 parliamentary elections.
Such attacks may present a setback to Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, who is seeking a second term, and other incumbents who hope voters will credit them for the sharp reduction in violence in Iraq over the past two years.
