Baghdad car bomb kills five

A car bomb that exploded at a wholesale vegetable market in southern Baghdad today killed five people and wounded 19.

The explosion took place in the mostly Sunni Saidiya district, police said.

A roadside bomb also exploded near a wholesale vegetable market in the Sunni district of Doura in southern Baghdad, wounding seven people.

Markets are a common target for bombers in the worsening sectarian conflict between majority Shias and minority Sunnis that has raised fears of all-out civil war.

In the worst attack since the US invasion in 2003, more than 200 people were killed last month in a string of car bombings and a mortar barrage in the Shia slum of Sadr City, a stronghold of the radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.