IRAQ:Suicide bombers have killed more than 100 people in a crowded market in a Shia district of Baghdad and a mainly Shia town in an upsurge in the sectarian violence that threatens all-out civil war.
Prime minister Nuri al-Maliki, a Shia, yesterday called for restraint and urged Iraqis to work with security forces to prevent the violence spiralling out of control. Bombs earlier this week in northern Iraq sparked mass reprisal killings.
A suicide bomber killed about 60 people in a market in the Shaab district of northern Baghdad, two police sources said, in what appeared to be the latest of a string of attacks on Shia districts and towns, which are blamed on al-Qaeda in Iraq.
Most of the victims were women and children, who had been shopping in the crowded market before the start of the nightly curfew, a health ministry official said.
At about the same time, three suicide car bombs exploded within minutes of each other in Khalis, 80km (50 miles) north of Baghdad, killing about 50 people and wounding scores, police and hospital officials said.
There has been a spike in violence, particularly outside the Iraqi capital, in recent days. Iraq is gripped by rampant violence between majority Shias and minority Sunnis that has killed tens of thousands in the past year.
On Tuesday two truck bombs killed 85 people in a Shia area of Tal Afar in northern Iraq. Shortly afterwards Shia gunmen, including police, shot dead up to 70 Sunni Arab men in reprisal.
In Khalis, one car bomb exploded in a commercial area and a second went off at a police checkpoint leading to the police headquarters and court building. A third bomber attacked police patrols rushing to the scene.
"It was a scene of horror. There were charred bodies and human remains scattered about," said one policeman. He said up to 48 people had been killed.
A second police source said more than 50 had been killed and more than 100 wounded. A local hospital official said they had received 40 bodies.
A survivor of the Shaab market blast in Baghdad, Wissam Hashim Ali (27) said there had been two car bombs, not a suicide bomber on foot as police said.
"I saw heads separated from the bodies and legs blown off," he said in hospital, where he was receiving treatment for his wounds, which were not serious.
A major security crackdown under way in Baghdad has succeeded in reducing the number of deaths in the capital. However, violence has surged elsewhere.
New US ambassador Ryan Crocker told his swearing-in ceremony that "terrorists, insurgents and militias continue to threaten security in Baghdad and around the country" and called Iraq America's "most critical foreign policy challenge". - (Reuters)