UPDATE 7
By Rosalind Russell and Michael Georgy
BAGHDAD, Oct 27 (Reuters) - Bombers struck at least four times in Baghdad's morning rush hour on Monday, killing at least 33 people near the Red Cross headquarters and police stations in the capital's bloodiest day since Saddam Hussein's overthrow.
The blasts shook the city after three U.S. soldiers were killed in separate attacks overnight. At least two of the morning explosions appeared to have been suicide bombings, with an ambulance used in the Red Cross bombing.
The explosions, sirens and smoke plunged Baghdad into fear and chaos at the outset of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan. The onslaught "is not only criminal, it's sacrilegious,'' U.S. Brigadier General Mark Hertling told reporters.
On Sunday rockets hit a fortified Baghdad hotel where U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Paul Wolfowitz was staying, killing a U.S. soldier and wounding 17 people. Wolfowitz was unhurt.
The suicide attack on the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) headquarters in central Baghdad killed 10 people and wounded at least 15, an ICRC official said.
An ICRC guard said the bomb vehicle looked like an ambulance. The blast blew down an outer wall and shattered windows in the ICRC building.
"We always believed we were protected by the humanitarian work we do,'' ICRC spokeswoman Nada Doumani told Reuters.
She said most of the casualties were Iraqis. "If this attack has an impact on our activities, it will again be the Iraqis who suffer.''
The ICRC cut its foreign staff from more than 100 to about 30 after a Sri Lankan technician was shot dead in July and after a suicide bomber devastated the U.N. headquarters in August, killing 22 people including U.N. envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello.
In northeast Baghdad, eight people died in a blast near a police station, a U.S. military policeman said. "There are eight dead, several walking wounded,'' Sergeant Mike Toole told Reuters at the scene in the Shaab district.
Witnesses said the attack also appeared to have been a suicide bombing. "It was a Landcruiser car that was speeding towards the police station. The (guards) fired on it four times. It turned right and blew up,'' said local resident Mohammed Ali.
Officials at one hospital said 15 people had been killed in attacks on other police stations in the southwestern Baya and western Khadra districts. Pools of blood covered the hospital floor.
"I was sitting in my office and suddenly there was a loud explosion and glass flew across the room at me,'' said wounded police investigator Ali Tahseen of the Baya blast.
"I was taken outside behind the building and I saw a group of policemen lying wounded.''
A police official said bombs had gone off near three police stations, but police had foiled an attack on a fourth, killing one suspect bomber and wounding another. The official said unexploded ordnance had also been found at a fire station and a market area.
RUSH HOUR EXPLOSIONS
The first blast went off at about 8.30 a.m. (0530 GMT) at the ICRC building. "I saw an ambulance car coming very fast towards the barrier and it exploded,'' the ICRC guard said.
Brigadier General Hertling said initial indications showed the vehicle had Red Cross or Red Crescent markings.
"The death toll is 10 -- two Iraqi guards working for the Red Cross and eight casual labourers going past in a lorry,'' ICRC official Pascal Jansen told Reuters.
He said 15 Iraqi staff of the ICRC had been wounded. Most staff had not arrived, due to late Ramadan working hours.
Hertling said guards had stopped the vehicle from entering the ICRC compound, so the bomber had detonated it about 20 metres (yards) from the compound's sandbagged entrance.
The blast dug a crater about one metre (three feet) deep and three to four metres (yards) across.
Reuters photographer Chris Helgren saw at least three bodies at the scene with their clothes blown off.
An Iraqi woman living nearby said two of her children had been wounded. "We were sleeping and the house came down on our heads,'' Muntaha Khalil told Reuters.
ICRC staff arriving for work broke down when they saw the havoc left by the suicide bombing. Women cried hysterically.
Reuters television footage showed smoke billowing from inside the blue and white walls of the Baya police compound, and burned out vehicles in its car park. The crumpled wreckage of a car lay on a road near the Khadra police station.
Overnight, three U.S. soldiers were killed, one in a mortar attack in Abu Ghraib, in Baghdad's western outskirts, and two in a roadside bomb blast in the city, the U.S. military said.
The deaths brought to 112 the number of American soldiers killed in hostile action in Iraq since President George W. Bush declared major combat over on May 1.
(Additional reporting by Fiona O'Brien, Ian Simpson, Andrew Gray and Wisam al-Qaisi)