A pair of female suicide bombers blew themselves up yesterday in two Baghdad pet bazaars, killing at least 64 people and wounding dozens, police said.
The attacks were the deadliest in the Iraqi capital since 30,000 more US forces flooded into the center of the country last spring.
In the first attack, a woman detonated explosives hidden under her traditional black Islamic robe in the central al-Ghazl market.
A police colonel also at the scene said the bomber was a young mentally-handicapped woman.
Police said at least 46 people were killed and 82 wounded.
About 20 minutes later, a second female suicide bomber struck another bird market in a predominantly Shiite area in southeastern Baghdad.
That blast killed as many as 18 people and wounded 25, police said.
There were conflicting details about the second blast.
The US military said initial reporting indicated it was a suicide car bombing carried out by a woman, but Iraqi police said the female attacker detonated an explosives belt at the entrance to the bazaar.
Casualty tolls also differed, with the military saying about 10 people were killed and 20 wounded and Iraqi police reporting 18 killed and 25 wounded.
The attack on the al-Ghazl market, which opens only on Fridays and is always crowded, was the second in months.
On Nov. 23, two bombs hidden in boxes exploded simultaneously in the market, leaving 13 people dead.
The attacks came as Iraqi officials reported civilian deaths across Iraq last month fell to a 23-month low.
Combined figures obtained from the defense, interior and health ministries showed that a total of 541 Iraqis -- 463 civilians, 22 soldiers and 56 policemen -- were killed last month.
The figure is down from 568 in December, 606 in November, 887 in October and 840 in September.
US military commanders say attacks of all types are down 62 percent after peaking in June, to levels not seen since before February 2006, when a wave of sectarian violence was unleashed by the bombing of a Shiite shrine in the city of Samarra.
The bloodshed that erupted after the shrine attack spiked in January last year with 1,992 deaths reported by the three ministries.
Iraqi and US officials attribute the drop in violence to a "surge" of an extra 30,000 US troops in Iraq, the formation by Sunni leaders of anti-Qaeda fronts, and Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's freezing of the activities of his Mahdi Army militia.
But US commanders warn that Iraq is still a dangerous place and that al-Qaeda -- though on the run -- is far from defeated.
While the number of Iraqis killed last month fell, US casualties rose to 39 soldiers killed, up from 23 in December.
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