Two car bombs tore through a packed shopping area of a mainly Shi'ite district of Baghdad today, killing 60 people in the worst attack since US and Iraqi troops launched a crackdown in the city five days ago.
Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki had on Friday trumpeted what he called the "brilliant success" of Operation Imposing Law in quelling the sectarian violence on the capital's streets.
The two car bombs exploded in quick succession near a busy, pedestrianised market area of New Baghdad, a mainly Shi'ite district in eastern Baghdad, killing 60 people and wounding 131, police said.
One of the explosions partially demolished a two-storey building.
Fifteen minutes earlier, a joint patrol of US and Iraqi police had stopped to pose for pictures with each other on the street corner where the second bomb exploded.
Baghdad's markets have been hit by a spate of particularly deadly carbombings since the start of the year. Some 71 people were killed a week ago in Shorja wholesale market, prompting US generals to look at pedestrianising the bigger markets.
A third car bomb today killed two people when it exploded near a police checkpoint in Sadr City, a stronghold of radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army militia.
Meanhwile, British forces clashed with gunmen armed with machine-guns and rocket-propelled grenades in a Mehdi Army stronghold in the southern Iraqi city of Basra. Iraqi police said at least three gunmen were killed.
The battle erupted during a crackdown by 3,000 Iraqi and British troops in the oil port on violence by criminal gangs and feuding Shi'ite militias. It is linked to the Baghdad offensive.
There had been a relative lull in sectarian attacks in the capital since the operation, seen as a last-ditch attempt to avert all-out civil war between majority Shi'ites and minority Sunni Arabs, was formally launched on Wednesday.
The US military has said it will take several months to know whether the crackdown has been successful. But analysts say it will still be extremely difficult to prevent carbombs, the favoured weapon of Sunni insurgents.
Earlier today, police had reported finding just five bodies shot, tortured and dumped in Baghdad on Saturday, a dramatic drop from the 40-50 they typically report each day.
It was one of the lowest tolls since the bombing of a Shi'ite shrine in Samarra a year ago unleashed a wave of sectarian violence that has killed tens of thousands of people.