Bombs strike Baghdad markets, kill at least 71

updated 9:01 p.m. ET Feb. 12, 2007

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Thunderous explosions and dense smoke swirled through central Baghdad on Monday when three car bombs ripped apart a crowded marketplace in a Shiite neighborhood, setting off secondary explosions and killing at least 71 people, police said. A suicide bombing nearby killed at least nine.

The blasts shattered the city center on the first anniversary, according to the Muslim lunar calendar, of the bombing last year of the important Shiite Golden Dome shrine in Samarra, north of the capital. That attack by al-Qaida in Iraq set off the sectarian bloodletting that has turned Baghdad and much of central Iraq into a battleground.

The suicide bomber detonated an explosives-filled vest in a crowd near a popular falafel restaurant in the Bab al-Sharqi area, not far from Shorja, police said, adding that 19 people also were wounded in that blast.

About a half-hour later, as the government called for a short period of commemoration for last year’s shrine attack, three parked car bombs exploded within seconds of each other, targeting two buildings about 200 yards apart. One of the cars was parked near the entrance to a parking garage under one of the buildings.

Chaos and carnage
Shops and stalls were obliterated and smoke blackened the area, obscuring what had been a sunny day as it rose hundreds of feet into the air above the market near the east bank of the Tigris River.

Ambulances and pickup trucks rushed many of the nearly 165 wounded to nearby al-Kindi hospital in the largely Shiite neighborhood, which has been hit by a series of deadly bombings this year. The sectarian killings have continued despite a new U.S. and Iraqi operation aimed at stopping the violence set off by the Feb. 22 bombing of the Samarra mosque.

After Monday’s market bombing, debris and clothing mannequins were scattered in pools of blood on the floor of the warehouse-type building while men piled up plastic chairs. Two men carried the limp body of one of the victims, while small fires burned in the rubble on the street outside the building.

One 38-year-old Shiite man said the blasts were clearly timed to coincide with the commemoration of the bombing in Samarra. Other people in the area screamed, “Where is the government?” “Where is the security plan?” “We have had enough.” “We have lost our money and goods and our source of living.”