BAGHDAD (AFP) - At least seven people were killed when a car bomb exploded in the middle of a traffic jam at the crossroads of a shopping street in Baghdad.
People were trapped in burning cars and shop fronts destroyed after the blast at the height of mid-morning rush hour that left at least 28 other people wounded, police and medics said Thursday.
"It is a car bomb in Saadun street," major Mohammed Fuad, from the Saadun police station, told AFP.
"It happened on the cross roads of Nassar Square where there was a major traffic jam. More than 10 cars are burning and many of them have people still inside," he said.
Injured civilians, many with their arms or legs broken, lay in the street awaiting ambulances, which had to battle through the heavy queues of cars that typically clog the roads of central Baghdad, the AFP reporter on the scene said.
One car dangled perilously from the roof on a five-storey building nearby where it was thrown by the force of the blast that sent a thick column of black smoke skyward when it ripped through the capital at about 11:30 am (0830 GMT).
"As we were driving very slowly because of the traffic jam and a car in front suddenly blew up," recalled Hussein Ali, with a stuttering voice due to shock, his face badly cut.
An initial toll by AFP from three nearby hospitals put the number of dead at seven and the number of wounded at 28.
The blast came just days after Prime Minister Iyad Allawi declared a state of emergency across most of the country and slapped a night time curfew on Baghdad in a frantic effort to stem the escalating chaos as the country prepares for national elections promised by January.
11/11/2004 - 11:44 GMT - AFP