Two bombs exploded in a main square of central Baghdad where scores of Iraqis were waiting for jobs as day laborers on Tuesday, killing at least 60 people, including seven policemen, and wounding 221, police said.
The labourers had gathered in Tayran Square to wait for work. The square is located near several government ministries and a bridge that crosses the Tigris River to the heavily fortified Green Zone, where Iraq's parliament and the U.S. and British embassies are located.
Gunfire was heard immediately after the explosion, Reuters added. The attack involved a parked car bomb and a suicide attacker who drove up in a minibus, pretended to hire day laborers, then set off his explosive as they got into his vehicle, said police Lt. Bilal Ali.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki once again pointed the finger at the takfiris (Sunni extremists) and their "Saddamist allies". "This massacre shows that those terror groups are endeavouring to create chaos and killing, beside arousing sectarianism in the country," he said in a statement, cited by AFP.
In other violence Tuesday, an Iraqi cameraman Aswan Ahmed Lutfallah working with US-based Associated Press Television Network (APTN) was shot dead in the northern city of Mosul.
Elsewhere, six people died while police found 13 bodies in Baquba, northeast of Baghdad.
On Monday, at least 66 people were killed or found dead in the Baghdad area and northern Iraq.
