BAGHDAD — A car bomb exploded Tuesday on a bustling commercial street in west Baghdad's Shiite neighborhood of Hurriya, killing at least 51 people and wounding 75, security officials said.
The blast, which occurred about 5:45 p.m., devastated a shopping area and bus stop where residents had waited for minibus taxis and vendors had sold falafel, burgers and juices. Rescuers lifted out the wounded and dead, while relatives searched for loved ones. It was the deadliest such attack in Baghdad since March.
A 14-year-old girl, dressed in a black headdress and robe, towed a boy by the hand and searched for her father.
"Where are they going to take the injured?" the weeping girl asked other distraught pedestrians.
Bombs explode regularly in the Iraqi capital, but death tolls seldom reach double digit figures these days. A pair of suicide bombings in February at pet markets in Shiite sections of Baghdad killed 99 people, and a double bombing in the city's Karada district killed 68 a month later.
After the explosion Tuesday, flames swallowed a pair of power generators and shot up a three-story building, trapping people inside and spewing a sheet of black smoke. The people climbed to the roof and ran across nearby rooftops to escape the fire.
On the ground, a woman's charred body lay in a car while volunteers carried the wounded and dead from the scene.
Some residents shaken by the blast blamed the government for weakening Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr's Mahdi Army militia. The neighborhood, once mixed, became largely Shiite during fall of 2006, when the capital was ripped by civil war. Many of Sadr's followers live there.
Sadr's fighters carried out many reprisal attacks against Sunnis at the height of Iraq's sectarian conflict, when car bombs exploded regularly in Shiite neighborhoods, killing dozens. However, the movement now has strained relations with Prime Minister Nouri Maliki, whom it criticizes for cooperating with the Americans and collaborating with its own political rival, the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council.
One man in his 20s said, "If the Mahdi Army was controlling Hurriya such things would never happen. Our government can't be trusted."
Sectarian tensions flared as some in the crowd made accusations against Sunni politician Adnan Dulaimi, who lives in the adjoining neighborhood of Adil. Dulaimi's guards once were arrested in connection with car bombs found in his compound. Some say gunmen linked to Dulaimi drove Shiites out of Adil.
