A powerful car bomb exploded in a crowded market area of Baghdad on Tuesday, killing 51 people and wounding 75, in the deadliest attack in the Iraqi capital in months. Police said the bomb was placed in a pick-up truck parked next to minibus taxis near the main market in the predominantly Shiite neighborhood of Al-Hurriya in northwestern Baghdad. The attack took place at around 5:30 p.m., at the peak of the evening rush hour, the officials said. Several nearby buildings and vehicles caught fire in the aftermath of the explosion that was so powerful it could be heard more than five kilometers away. The casualties, many of them women and children, were taken to several city hospitals, officials said. The blast set fire to 20 shops and levelled a multi-story building, a security source said. It damaged many vehicles and cut off electricity to the area. The bombing came just hours after a bomb hidden on a motorcycle exploded at a checkpoint in another area of north Baghdad, killing four fighters of a group battling Al-Qaeda militants. Four other members of the group were wounded, along with two civilians. That attack took place at a checkpoint run by the US-backed militia in the Al-Sulek neighborhood, security officials said. Earlier, the US military said it killed four Al-Qaeda militants in a raid in the northern city of Mosul on Tuesday, but Iraqi police said the three brothers and their father shot in the operation were not insurgents. A few weeks ago, the US military announced that violence in Iraq had dropped to a four-year low. Baghdad has been relatively quiet since a May 10 truce ended weeks of fighting between security forces and militiamen loyal to anti-American Shiite cleric Moqtada Al-Sadr. Tuesday's attack was the worst in Baghdad since 68 people were killed in coordinated bombings in a packed shopping area in the capital in March. A month before that, female bombers killed 99 people in attacks blamed on Al-Qaeda at two popular Baghdad pet markets.
