From Times Online
April 18, 2007
Carnage in Iraq as 157 confirmed dead
David Byers and agencies
At least 157 people have been killed in a spate of bombings in Iraq today.
The deadliest of four strikes was a suspected Sunni car-bomb near central Baghdad, which was believed to have killed at least 112.
The explosives-rigged car blew up a market in the Al-Sadriyah district, home to a mixed Kurdish and Shia population.
Among the dead were reportedly several construction workers, who had been rebuilding the marketplace after a bomb destroyed many shops and killed 137 people there in February.
The number of fatalities from the incident was expected to rise further, as 115 other people were reported to have been injured in the blast, including women and children, Raad Muhsin, an official at Al-Kindi Hospital where the victims were taken, told the AP news agency.
In other blasts during a bloody day in Iraq today, a suicide car bomber crashed into an Iraqi police checkpoint at the entrance to Sadr City, the capital's biggest Shia Muslim neighbourhood and a stronghold of the radical anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, killing 30 and wounding 45.
A third explosion saw a parked car explode near a private hospital in the central Baghdad neighborhood of Karradah, killing 11 people and wounding 13. The blast was reported to have damaged the Abdul-Majid hospital and other nearby buildings.
The other explosion, on a minibus in the northwestern Risafi area of Baghdad, killed four and wounded six others, officials told AP.
The death toll incurred in the wartorn country increased still further when it was later revealed that four policemen in Baghdad had been killed when gunmen ambushed their patrol south of the city centre.
