At least 121 people were killed and 226 wounded on Saturday when a suicide truck bomb slammed into the central Baghdad district of Al-Sadriya.
BAGHDAD: A suicide bomber killed 135 people on Saturday in the deadliest single bomb blast in Baghdad since the 2003 war, driving a truck laden with one tonne of explosives into a busy market in a mainly Shi'ite area.
The blast, which Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki blamed on Saddam Hussein supporters and other Sunni militants, shattered stalls and smashed shopfronts.
It comes as US and Iraqi troops prepare for an offensive seen as a last-ditch effort to stem worsening sectarian bloodshed.
"It was a terrible scene. Many shops and houses were destroyed," said one resident, Jassem, who rushed from his home to help pull people from the rubble after hearing the explosion that rocked Baghdad.
Maliki vowed in January to launch a crackdown in the capital to crush insurgents who have defied attempts by his government to get control of security, but it has not yet begun.
US President George W. Bush has said he is sending 21,500 reinforcements to Iraq, most earmarked for the Baghdad offensive, despite vocal opposition at home, especially among Democrats who now control both houses of Congress.
Speaking to House of Representatives Democrats on Saturday, Bush assured them that his commitment to Maliki's government was not "open-ended" and it would have to meet certain benchmarks.
A US intelligence report said on Friday that escalating violence between minority Sunni Arabs and politically dominant majority Shi'ites met the definition of civil war.
A senior Interior Ministry official, Major General Jihad al -Jaberi, told state television that the suicide bomber had driven a truck with one tonne of explosives.
"All Iraqis were shaken today by this crime," Maliki said in a statement in which he again spoke of his government's determination to crush the militants.
"The Saddamists and Takfirists (Sunni militants) have committed another crime."
Police said more than 300 people were wounded. The casualties swamped the capital's hospitals. There were chaotic scenes at Ibn al-Nafis hospital in central Baghdad, where hallways overflowed with wounded on trolleys.
"I was in my shop and there was a great explosion and the roof fell in on me. I woke up here in hospital," said one man at the hospital with blood streaming down his face.
Emergency workers dragged bodies from the debris and piled them on pickup trucks, a Reuters reporter at the scene said.
Car bombs in the same market in December killed 51.
Saturday's blast came hours after Iraq's leading Shi'ite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, renewed an appeal to Iraqis to avoid violence.
"Everybody knows the necessity for us to stand together and reject the sectarian tension to avoid stirring sectarian differences," his new fatwa, or religious edict, said.
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