More than 40 killed in twin car bombs in Baghdad

By Sattar Rahim

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - At least 41 people were killed and 68 wounded on Wednesday when two car bombs ripped through a busy market in Baghdad's Sadr City slum, mowing down families as they crowded around a popular ice cream parlour, police said.

A third car bomb planted in a taxi in the mainly Shi'ite Muslim area was detonated by security forces.

The blasts followed two days of suicide bombings last week in which 150 people died, stirring fears Iraq could descend into a new spiral of sectarian conflict just as it appeared to be emerging from six years of bloodshed.

After Wednesday's explosions, Iraqi troops fired shots to scatter bystanders crowded around charred wreckage. Angry residents threw stones and empty bottles at army vehicles and accused the soldiers of failing to protect them.

"Instead of helping us to evacuate the wounded, they are shooting at us. This is the Maliki government?" one man, calling himself Abu Ahmed, shouted indignantly about the government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.

Many of last week's victims were pilgrims from Shi'ite Iran while the sprawling slum of Sadr City is a stronghold of support for anti-American Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

Targeting Shi'ites is a tactic used by al Qaeda and other Sunni Islamist insurgents to try to provoke sectarian clashes.

Body parts lay scattered around the smoking wreck of a car after the blasts while the wounded were piled into private cars, minibuses and on the back of a pick-up truck and rushed to hospital. Police vehicles cleared a way for the convoy.