Bomb explodes at Baghdad market, kills 5: Police

Baghdad, Dec 18: A car bomb exploded at the entrance to a wholesale vegetable market in southern Baghdad today, killing five people and wounding 19, police said.

The blast took place in the mostly Sunni Saidiya district, police said. A roadside bomb also exploded near a wholesale vegetable market in the Sunni district of Doura in southern Baghdad, wounding seven people, police said.

Markets are a common target for bombers in the worsening sectarian conflict between majority Shi'ites and minority Sunnis that has raised fears of all-out civil war.

In the worst attack since the US invasion in 2003, more than 200 people were killed last month in a string of carbomb blasts and a mortar barrage in the Shi'ite slum of Sadr City, a stronghold of the radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

Reuters