More than 120 feared dead in Baghdad bombing

A suicide truck bomber struck a market in a predominantly Shiite area of Baghdad today, killing as many as 121 people among the crowd buying food for evening meals, one of the most devastating attacks in the capital since the war started.

The attacker was driving a truck carrying foodstuffs including oil and flour when he detonated a ton of explosives, destroying stores and stalls that had been set up in the busy outdoor Sadriyah market, police said.

The late-afternoon explosion was the latest in a series of attacks against mainly Shiite commercial targets in the capital. No group claimed responsibility for the attack, but it appeared to be part of a bid by Sunni insurgents to provoke retaliatory violence and kill as many people as possible ahead of a planned US-Iraqi security sweep.

Hours later, mortars slammed into several predominantly Sunni areas in Baghdad, killing at least two people and wounding nearly 20, police said.

Many of the injured from the market blast were driven to overwhelmed hospitals in pickup trucks and angry young men lifted bodies onto stretchers. The Kindi hospital, Baghdad’s main emergency facility, was overwhelmed and had to start refusing patients, asking ambulances to take them elsewhere.

“It was a strong blow. A car exploded. I fell on the ground,” said one young man with a bandaged head, his face still streaked with blood.

Police and hospital officials said at least 121 people were killed and 226 wounded. The Health Ministry put the figure at 105 killed and 331 wounded.

Major General Jihad al-Jabiri, head of the explosives department at the Interior Ministry, told Iraqi state television that the truck was carrying a ton of explosives and destroyed 10 buildings in the market.

“It was a suicide attacker who entered the market at a time when it was packed with people,” al-Jabiri said. “There are still bodies under the rubble.”

He criticised checkpoints at the market’s entrance for allowing the truck to drive through, adding that this attack “is a challenge by the terrorists to the security plan” and calling on the government to deport foreigners from Arab countries since most of the recent attacks have been carried out by foreign suicide bombers.

The Sadriyah market sits on a sidestreet lined with stores and vendors selling fruit, vegetables and other food items. The area is largely occupied by Shiite Kurds, a minority as most Kurds are Sunni, and the market is just about 500 yards from a revered Sunni shrine in an adjacent neighbourhood.

The blast was the deadliest attack in the capital since Nov. 23, when suspected al Qaida in Iraq fighters attacked the capital’s Sadr City Shiite slum with a series of car bombs and mortars that struck in quick succession, killing at least 215 people.

A suicide bomber also crashed his car into the Bab al-Sharqi market, near Sadriyah, on January 22, killing 88 people.

South of Baghdad, a pair of suicide bombers detonated explosives on Thursday among shoppers in a crowded outdoor market in the Shiite city of Hillah, killing at least 73 people and wounding 163, police said.

Iraq’s senior Shiite cleric called for Muslim unity and an end to sectarian conflict – his first public statement in months on the worsening security crisis.

The Iranian-born Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani urged all Muslims to work to overcome sectarian differences and calm the passions, which serve only “those who want to dominate the Islamic country and control its resources to achieve their aims.”