Baghdad car bomb explodes in food market, killing 30

BAGHDAD – A car bomb ripped through a wholesale food market in western Baghdad on Sunday, flattening cars and shops and killing at least 30 people in the deadliest of a wave of attacks across Iraq that killed at least 50 people.\nThe attack came amid an 11-week-old crackdown by U.S.-led forces intended to bring stability to Baghdad.\nAs part of that crackdown, U.S. and Iraqi forces raided the Shiite neighborhood of Sadr City early Sunday, uncovering a weapons cache, a torture room and killing at least eight insurgents in a gunbattle, the military said.\nIn other violence, three U.S. troops were killed in separate attacks, the military said Sunday.\nTwo Marines were killed Saturday in fighting in Anbar province, a Sunni insurgent stronghold west of Baghdad, and a roadside bomb killed a soldier and wounded four others Friday in western Baghdad, the military said. The deaths raised the count of U.S. military members who have died since the Iraq war started in March 2003 to at least 3,365, according to an Associated Press count.\nThe market blast Sunday erupted around noon in the mixed Sunni-Shiite Baiyaa neighborhood and devastated the area, reducing cars and trucks to their charred skeletons and ripping the roofs and exteriors from shops. In addition to the dead, dozens were injured.\nBlood pooled in the dirty streets. Hospital officials said two pickup trucks filled with body parts were brought to the morgue.\n“I was waiting near a shop to lift some boxes when I saw the owner of the shop fall down,” said Satar Hussein, 22, a worker in the market. “I helped him inside the shop, but he was already dead. The next thing I felt was pain in my left shoulder and some people rushing me to the hospital.”\nAli Hamid, 25, the owner of a food store, said he was selling boxes of Pepsi when he was hit with shrapnel in his hand.\n“I fainted, and the next thing I remember is some people putting me in a pickup with two dead bodies and rushing me to the hospital,” he said, condemning the attack as “a terrorist act aiming at creating more sectarian tension and strife.”\nNo one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack in Baiyaa, the scene of frequent sectarian violence including a bombing and mortar attack last week that killed seven people.\nIn an effort to strike at insurgents, U.S. troops led an early morning raid into Sadr City and were attacked by militants armed with rifles and rockets who were hiding in a building. Four other armed men attacked them from behind a car, and the troops again returned fire, destroying the car, the military said.\nThe troops had targeted four buildings in the area based on intelligence indicating the presence of an insurgent cell that smuggled weapons, including powerful roadside bombs known as “explosively formed penetrators,” from Iran, sent fighters to the neighboring country for training and was involved in a kidnapping network, the military said.\nThe target of the raid was not found, said Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, the chief U.S. military spokesman.