Three massive explosions in the Iraqi capital Baghdad have killed at least 15 people and wounded 35 others, police sources told Al Jazeera.
Smoke could be seen rising into the sky above Baghdad on Sunday, as helicopters circled overhead. Gunfire could also be heard echoing across the city.
There was no word yet on the cause of the explosions, one of which went off near the Iranian embassy.
Al Jazeera's Zeina Khodr, reporting from Baghdad, said the explosions occurred only minutes apart.
"The first [explosion] was approximately at 11:10 (8:10GMT) ... they seem to have been coordinated explosions," she said. "The roads leading to the Baghdad governorate has been sealed off."
Major General Qassim al-Moussawi, an Iraqi security forces spokesman, told Al Jazeera that two of those explosions occurred in Baghdad's Mansour district, in the west of the capital, while the third explosion occurred near the Iranian embassy.
Calm broken
The blasts on Sunday were the first to shake the capital in recent weeks, following Iraq's election on March 7. However, an attack in the early hours of Saturday left 25 people dead in the village of Albusaifi just to the south of the capital.
Both Saturday's attack and Sunday's explosions come at a of political uncertainty for the country, as no clear winner has yet emerged from last month's elections.
"This has been the real fear, the very fact that the security situation could destabilize simply because of the political negations taking place to form a new Iraqi government," Khodr said.
PHOTO CAPTION
Smoke billows from the scene of a blast in the Iraqi capital Baghdad.
Al-Jazeera