Blast rips through Baghdad crowd
 Up to 35 people may have been injured in the explosion |
A car bomb blast which ripped through a crowd of shoppers near a bus stop in northern Baghdad has killed at least 16 people and injured more than 30.
The bomb went off near a market in the capital's Shaab district, a mainly Shia area, officials say.
Iraqi police believe it was a deliberate attempt to kill the maximum number of civilians possible.
Violence has declined in Iraq recently but on Monday, a suicide bomber killed 25 people in the north of the country.
Nearly 70 people died earlier this month in two suicide attacks in Baghdad.
On Wednesday, a US military spokesman said that attacks across Iraq had fallen to levels of the early months of the US-led war which began in March 2003.
'Sending message'
The car with the bomb was parked near a bus terminal between a hospital and a busy market.
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Iraqi officials say four children and at least three women were among those killed in the blast, which happened on Thursday afternoon.
No-one has so far claimed responsibility for the attack.
Police think it was a deliberate attempt to slaughter civilians at random, probably by al-Qaeda in Iraq, as a way of sending a message that "we are still here", the BBC's Hugh Sykes in Baghdad says.
Our correspondent adds that the poor and unremarkable Shaab district has been attacked several times before.
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