60 dead, 200 hurt in rising violence

This was the fourth car bomb of the month in the northern city.
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Bombs killed more than 60 people and wounded more than 200 Sunday in Baghdad and the northern oil center of Kirkuk -- a dramatic escalation of violence as U.S. and Iraqi forces crack down on Iraq's most feared Shiite militia.
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki left Sunday for talks in Washington this week with President Bush to discuss sectarian violence, which has risen sharply since Iraq's national unity government took office two months ago.
A suicide driver detonated a minivan at the entrance to a bustling market in Sadr City, the capital's biggest Shiite district and stronghold of radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army militia.
At least 34 people were killed and 74 were wounded, the Iraqi army said in a statement. Eight more people died and about 20 were injured when a roadside bomb exploded two hours later at a municipal building in Sadr City about a half-mile from the car bombing, the army said.
In Kirkuk, 180 miles to the north, a car bomb detonated at midday near a courthouse. The courthouse is located among a cluster of wooden shops and stalls, many of which burst into flames, engulfing the warren of crowded streets in roiling black smoke.
Twenty people were killed and 159 were wounded, police said. The tally of injured was so high because many people were trampled as panic swept shoppers, police said. Others suffered burns when the initial blast triggered secondary explosions in shops that sold chemicals and flammable liquids, police said.
Scenes at local hospitals were gruesome. Victims young and old lay bleeding on stretchers and gurneys, some of them scarred with horrific burns. Many lay unattended as doctors and nurses scrambled to care for the large number of wounded.
Recent violence
It was the fourth car bombing this month in Kirkuk, the center of Iraq's vast northern oil fields. Tensions have been rising in Kirkuk because the area's Arabs, Kurds and Turkomen all have rival claims to the region.
Also Sunday, the U.S. military announced that an American soldier assigned to the 1st Armored Division was killed the day before in Anbar province, a bastion of the Sunni-dominated insurgency.
The Sadr City car bombing was the second major suicide attack this month in the teeming slum district, where al-Sadr's Mahdi militiamen rule the streets. A July 1 suicide bombing in Sadr City was followed by a wave of reprisal killings of Sunnis.
Many Sunni politicians hold the Mahdi Army responsible for the wave of attacks against Sunnis that followed the Feb. 22 bombing at a Shiite shrine in Samarra. Al-Sadr's aides deny that the militia is doing any more than protecting Shiites from attacks by Sunni extremists including al-Qaida in Iraq.
So feared is the militia among Sunnis that many of them refer to any band of armed, masked Shiites as the Mahdi Army.
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