BAGHDAD - A parked car bomb ripped through a crowded outdoor market Tuesday in southwestern Baghdad, killing 25 people despite a three-month-old security crackdown meant to reduce violence in the capital.
At least 60 people were wounded in the blast in the Shiite-dominated neighborhood of Amil. Nearby buildings were badly damaged and set ablaze, while others were reduced to rubble. Residents ran through the streets with buckets and pots of water, while others frantically tore through the rubble, looking for survivors. Groups of men carried bodies wrapped in tarps out of the damaged buildings.
Fadhil Hussein, 32, who sells spices in the market, said he was thrown from his stall and suffered shrapnel wounds in his back and head.
"I found myself in a pickup truck with other people. Some of them were bleeding and yelling," he said.
The street was filled with water, presumably from a water main that burst.
Sami Hussein, 25, was heading to the market with her 5-year old son when she heard the blast, "followed by gray and black smoke, which engulfed the market and made me to fall on the ground."
She suffered shrapnel wounds in her face and legs.
"I lost my son, and have no idea about his fate," she said. Medical officials at the hospital said he had been killed in the explosion.
The neighborhood has seen an increase in violence in recent weeks, and Sunni politicians expressed fears that Shiite militiamen had resumed their campaign of sectarian cleansing in Amil and nearby neighborhoods of southwestern Baghdad.
The blast came amid the U.S. and Iraqi security operation meant to flush out insurgents and restore order to Baghdad. Deadly attacks targeting civilians and police have continued, however.
U.S. military officials say insurgent groups, feeling the pressure from the crackdown, have hit back by stepping up their car bombings with their devastating death tolls. A May 6 bombing in a market in the neighboring Baiyaa district killed 30 people and wounded 80 others.
Violence was reported elsewhere in the capital Tuesday.
A few minutes before the bombing in Amil, gunmen in two cars drove through the nearby Khadra neighborhood and ambushed a civilian car carrying three plainclothes police from the major crimes unit, killing two and wounding the third, police said.
Police and other Iraqi security officers have been heavily targeted by insurgents, who accuse them of collaborating with U.S.-led forces in the country.
Another police officer was killed when a roadside bomb exploded next to a police patrol driving through an eastern Baghdad neighborhood, police said. Three other officers were wounded.
In the Sunni-dominated Waziriya neighborhood in northern Baghdad, gunmen disguised as soldiers set up a fake checkpoint and stopped a minibus bringing college students to the Shiite neighborhood of Sadr City. The militants killed eight of the students and wounded three others, police said.
At another fake checkpoint near Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, gunmen killed six people from one family -- a woman, her 5-year-old son and four men -- and stole their car, police said.
Later Tuesday, two mortar shells slammed into a teacher's college affiliated with Baghdad University, killing three students and injuring seven, police said.
And in the Baghdad neighborhood of Dora, a sniper shot two civilians, killing one and wounding the other, police said.
The violence came as U.S. politicians debated how long U.S. troops will remain in Iraq. A senior American official warned Monday that the Bush administration may reconsider its support if Iraqi leaders do not make major reforms by fall.
The U.S. official, who briefed reporters on condition his name not be published, did not say what actions could be taken by the White House, but his comments reflected the Bush administration's need to show results in Iraq -- as an answer to pressure by the Democrats in Congress seeking to set timetables on the U.S. military presence.
Also Monday, British troops clashed with Shiite Muslim gunmen in the southern city of Basra. Britain's military said one British soldier and a civilian driver were killed when a supply convoy was attacked in the center of the city, Iraq's second biggest.
Elsewhere, U.S. troops raided safe houses south of Baghdad but failed to find three soldiers missing since a May 12 ambush that left four other Americans and an Iraqi dead.
"We've (identified) some safe houses and we targeted a couple of those today and they were able to slip away from us. But we're going to come at things from a different angle," said a U.S. spokesman, Maj. Webster Wright.
U.S. officers said the search by thousands of U.S. and Iraqi soldiers may be forcing the kidnappers to move the three Americans frequently, preventing insurgents from posting pictures of their captives on the Internet.
"We choose to be cautiously optimistic," Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch told CNN. "We're pursuing all leads with a passion, but right now we believe our soldiers are still alive. Each day that passes when we don't see proof of life, it causes us concern."
With violence raging, pressure is mounting on Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government to demonstrate progress on key reforms or risk losing American support for the unpopular war.
Defense Minister Abdul-Qader al-Obeidi said that Iraq's military was drawing up plans to cope with any quick U.S. military pullout.
"The army plans on the basis of a worst case scenario so as not to allow any security vacuum," al-Obeidi said. "There are meetings with political leaders on how we can deal with a sudden pullout."
White House spokesman Tony Fratto said Bush expressed confidence in al-Maliki during a telephone call Monday to the Iraqi leader.
He said the two talked about political progress in Iraq, and al-Maliki gave Bush updates on two key U.S. demands -- legislation to share Iraq's oil wealth among its regions and ethnic groups and a reform of the constitution.
But two senior Iraqi officials told The Associated Press that Bush warned al-Maliki that Washington expected to see "tangible results quickly" on the oil bill and other legislation as the price for continued support. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not supposed to release the information.
