Blood-soaked children’s slippers lay on the street

IRAQIS crowded into a hospital in a northern suburb of Baghdad yesterday, comforting or searching for scores of loved ones killed or injured in an air-raid on a busy market.

The al-Nasr market in north-west Baghdad was strewn with wreckage and blood stained the pavement outside.

Crowds of mourners shouted Allahu akbar God is great and blood-soaked children's slippers lay on the street not far from the crater left by the bomb.

The explosion occurred around 6pm (1500 GMT) in the working-class neighbourhood of al-Shoala when the market was at its busiest, witnesses said. They said they saw an aircraft flying at a high altitude just before the blast.

The US Central Command in Qatar said it was looking into reports of the attack. Iraqi officials have blamed US forces for an explosion at another market that killed 14 people on Wednesday. The Pentagon has denied targeting the neighbourhood.

Omar Ismail, a 35-year-old engineer who witnessed the market blast, said body parts were strewn across the street and that, in the immediate aftermath of the blast, women, men and children were screaming and running around in a daze looking for loved ones.

"Why do they hate the Iraqi people so much?" he asked.

The explosion left a crater the size of a coffee table in front of a row of shops. Water seeped from ruptured pipes and corrugated iron dangled from the roofs of the damaged shops. A red Volkswagen parked only a yards from the crater was peppered with holes.

"Why do they makes mistakes like these if they have the technology?" said Abdel-Hadi Adai, who lost his 27-year-old brother-in-law in the blast. "There are no military installations anywhere near here."

Another powerful blast went off at about 1am Saturday (2200 GMT Friday), apparently on the west bank of the Tigris River. Many government departments are located in the area, including the Information Ministry.

Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf said 58 people were killed in the market blast and that the number was likely to rise.

There were conflicting reports on the number of casualties. Haqi Ismail Razouq, director of the nearby al-Nour hospital where the dead and injured were taken, put the death toll at 30 and the injured at 47, while surgeon Issa Ali Ilwan said 47 were killed and 50 injured. Witnesses at the scene said they counted as many as 50 dead.

"Most of the injured are children and are in very serious condition," the hospital director said.