Insurgents launched a deadly series of rocket and bomb attacks as night fell on a commercial district of Baghdad on Sunday, killing at least 20 civilians and injuring 75, security officials said.
The blitz on the Zafaraniyah district in the south-east of the city began when a Katyusha rocket demolished a four-storey building containing residences and shops in the popular Al-Qubyasi market, an interior ministry official said.
Five minutes later, as bystanders rushed to drag the dead and wounded from the rubble, a car bomb detonated 100 metres (yards) away, shattering shop fronts and scattering wounded people across the street, he added. Officials from both the defence and interior ministries put the initial death toll at 20, with 75 wounded, while a medical official at the scene told AFP that the death toll could rise still further.
"There are dozens of bodies in the street. The building just collapsed. It was four storeys, with homes and shops. Civil defence personnel are trying to get bodies out of the building. The shops underneath are destroyed," he said.
Less than an hour later another bomb attack brought down a second building nearby and - again after local people gathered at the site - a suicide bomber on a motorbike ploughed into the crowd and blew himself up.
Meanwhile, a fifth bomb attack targeted a police patrol on its way to the scene, injuring three officers, the official said.
Baghdad is in the grip of a dirty war between rival sectarian gangs and insurgents targeting US-led coalition forces and the national unity government led by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.
Around 50 people are killed every day, according to figures from the city morgue.
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