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Suicide bomber kills 17 in Sadr City market

Iraqis gesture as they gather at the site where a car bomb exploded in Baghdad's Sadr City district on Wednesday. Bombers targeted the volatile Shiite district on Wednesday, killing 15 people a day after dozens of students and teachers were slaughtered in twin bombings outside a university. PHOTO: AFP

A suicide car bomber killed 17 Shiites at a teeming Sadr City market on Wednesday, while gunmen in a predominantly Sunni neighborhood of Baghdad shot up a convoy of democracy workers in an ambush that took the lives of a US woman and three bodyguards.

The attack on the marketplace came one day after car bombings killed scores of university students just 3km away, indicating that al-Qaeda-linked fighters are bent on a surge of bloodshed as US and Iraqi forces gear up for a fresh neighborhood-by-neighborhood security sweep through the capital.

Although nobody claimed responsibility for either day's car bombings, such attacks are the hallmark of Sunni militants, who appear to be taking advantage of a waiting period before the security crackdown to step up attacks on Shiites.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said on Wednesday that about 400 militiamen loyal to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr had been arrested over the past several weeks.

It was the first time al-Maliki detailed specific arrests of members of the Mahdi Army, which has been blamed for much of the sectarian killing in the past months.

A Baghdad Mahdi Army commander, meanwhile, said US and Iraqi troops launched a major campaign on Tuesday in Um al-Maalef, a Shiite neighborhood in south Baghdad.

"They detained every man who was able to carry weapons. We heard from our people in the area that about 400 people were detained," said the militia commander on condition of anonymity because senior figures in the group are not permitted to give their names.

He said that last month US troops had killed one of the Mahdi Army's top commanders, known as Abu al-Sudour, in Sadr City.

State television also reported that at least 100 insurgents were killed on Wednesday in clashes with Iraqi troops in a predominantly Sunni region northeast of Baghdad. Troops captured dozens of insurgents and seized large amounts of ammunition, the state-run Iraqiya channel said, quoting police.

The fighting reportedly took place near the district of Balad Ruz, 70km northeast of the capital. The report couldn't immediately be confirmed with Iraqi authorities.

An Iraqi army officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of security concerns, said the attack on the Western convoy took place in Yarmouk, a predominantly Sunni neighborhood in western Baghdad.

The three-car convoy belonged to the Washington-based National Democratic Institute, according to Les Campbell, the group's Middle East director. He said the four dead included a US woman along with three security contractors -- a Hungarian, a Croatian and an Iraqi. Two others were wounded, one seriously, Campbell said. Their names were withheld until their families could be notified.

The marketplace explosion took place near a popular commercial area in Sadr City, a sprawling Shiite district in eastern Baghdad.

The blast shattered the windows of nearby shops and restaurants, and blood pooled in the street. Angry Iraqis surrounded the charred mass of twisted metal, all that was left of the explosives-packed car.
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