Car bomb explosion kills 23 in Baghdad

BAGHDAD, Iraq – Shattering weeks of relative calm in the Iraqi capital, a car bomb exploded in a public market Tuesday evening, killing 23 people and wounding 28, according to Baghdad police Maj. Sadoun Abbas.

The blast, the deadliest here since early December, came as shoppers browsed stalls in the southwestern neighborhood of Dora before returning home for dinner. It set shops and cars ablaze and sent a stream of victims rushing by car and ambulance to the city’s Yarmouk Hospital.

Iraqi security forces, who said the bomb was detonated by remote control, almost immediately announced the arrest of three suspects, including one Palestinian.

“They are under investigation, and it is not yet certain that they are perpetrators,” Abbas said.

The attack was one of several across the country that killed close to 30 people.

The death toll in Baghdad was the highest since the Dec. 8 bombing of a city bus station that killed up to 30 people.

An explosion in a Baghdad coffee shop and another moments later in front a nearby restaurant last month killed at least 22.

The scarcity of high-casualty attacks in Baghdad since the days leading up to Iraq’s Dec. 15 parliamentary elections has led some analysts and politicians to speculate that the country’s Sunni Arab-led insurgency was lying low to give Sunni politicians more leverage in their push for top positions in the next government.

A similar lull in violence followed parliamentary elections in January 2005, but it ended with a spate of deadly car bombings after the interim government was formed.

Western officials are heavily lobbying the Shiite Muslim religious parties, which won the largest share of seats in the new assembly, to form a government that incorporates all factions of Iraqi society to help undermine support for the insurgency.

Asked Tuesday about the formation of Iraq’s government, visiting British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said he believed the Iraqi people want “a broad government of national unity” in which “no party, no ethnic or religious grouping can dominate.”

“It is a crucial moment today for the people of Iraq,” Straw said in a news conference alongside Iraqi President Jalal Talabani.

“The international community, particularly those of us who played a part in liberating Iraq, obviously have an interest in a prosperous and stable and democratic Iraq,” Straw said.