The popular market in Tayaran Square was full of shoppers heading home from Friday prayers.
By JERUSALEM POST STAFFiraq dead 224.88(photo credit: AP)
A car bomb detonated in the middle of a busy market in central Baghdad on Friday, killing at least 14 people and wounding 64, police and hospital officials said.
At least one woman and a child were killed in the blast, a police officer said on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to talk to the press. Both the officer and a hospital official who also would not give his name, said 14 people were killed.
The popular market in Tayaran Square, a predominantly Shiite area that has been targeted by insurgents in the past, was full of shoppers heading home from Friday prayers. In late May, a car bomb killed 23 people in the square.
The bombing comes at the end of a relatively quiet holiday period in Iraq's capital.
Violence across the country is down nearly 60 percent, according to the US military, largely because of an influx of American troops in the capital and the growth of anti-al-Qaida in Iraq groups in Anbar province and elsewhere.
But violence still plagues Diyala province just north of Baghdad, where US commanders say many of the militants that held parts of the capital earlier this year have fled.
The US military said it had killed four heavily armed gunmen tied to al-Qaida in Iraq in an operation Friday near Muqdadiyah in Diyala. Another was killed in a predominantly Sunni area south of Baghdad.
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