A twin attack in central Baghdad's commercial district which the US embassy on Friday blamed on Al-Qaeda killed at least 68 people, making it the second deadliest assault in Iraq this year.The roadside bomb, followed by a suicide attack, ripped through Al-Atar Street in the Karada neighbourhood on Thursday evening. In addition to the dead, 154 people were wounded, an interior ministry official said on Friday, adding that among the casualties were several women and children who had been cut down by the blasts while shopping.
On Friday, relatives carried the bodies of loved ones killed in the attack to their burial site in Najaf, an AFP photographer said.
Near the blast site, a number of roadside stalls had been destroyed, and windows of nearby shops and homes had been blown out by the force of the explosions.
Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki ordered security forces to "chase and arrest the criminals" who committed the attack. "He blamed the terrorists and condemned the latest barbaric crime against the civilians," a statement released by his office said.
The US embassy in Baghdad said the attack was carried out by Al-Qaeda. "Such indiscriminate mass violence demonstrates that Al-Qaeda in Iraq will spare no effort, however brutal, to attempt to re-ignite sectarian strife in Iraq," the embassy said in a statement released Friday.
An interior ministry official said the attack was coordinated to inflict maximum casualties. "First a roadside bomb went off and as people and police gathered to rescue the victims, a suicide bomber blew himself up amid the crowd," he said.
The worst attack this year was on February 1, when bombings in the capital's bird market killed 100 people.
Figures collected by AFP on March 1 from the interior, defence and health ministries show that violence in Iraq surged in February after drop in each of the six months to January. Iraq saw 721 people killed in February, a 33 percent rise over January, when 541 people were killed. That was down from 1,856 last August.
The drop over six months was attributed to a "surge" of an extra 30,000 US troops in Iraq, the formation by Sunni leaders of anti-Qaeda fronts and a ceasesfire by Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia.
On Friday, another suicide bomber blew himself up near a police station in the northern city of Mosul. Four policemen were killed and 17 people wounded, including 15 policemen, police officials said. The bomber attacked the Al-Waqhas police station in the Ras al-Jadha neighbourhood at around 7:00 am (0400 GMT).
In another incident, one person was killed and 14 wounded when two bombs went off within minutes of each other near the home of a police officer in Mosul, police said.
Also on Friday, several armed men dressed like security forces stormed a house in the town of Tuz Khurmatu, south of the northern oil city of Kirkuk, and shot dead a woman and a child, police Captain Abdullah al-Bayati said. Three others from the same family were wounded.