Four bombs kill 178 people in Baghdad

A police official confirmed the toll, speaking on condition of anonymity as he was not authorised to release the information.

Among the dead were several construction workers who had been rebuilding the mostly Shiite marketplace after a bombing destroyed many shops and killed 137 people in February, the police official said.

The labourers usually finish work around 4 pm everyday. One of those wounded, 28-year-old Salih Mustafa, said he was waiting for a minibus to head home when the bomb went off at 4.05 pm.

8220;I rushed with others to give a hand and help the victims,8221; he said. 8220;I saw three bodies in a wooden cart, and civilian cars were helping to transfer the victims. It was a horrible scene.8221;

About an hour earlier, a suicide car bomber crashed into an Iraqi police checkpoint at an entrance to Sadr City, the capital8217;s biggest Shiite Muslim neighbourhood and a stronghold for the militia led by radical anti-US cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

The explosion killed at least 41 people, including five Iraqi security officers, and wounded 76, police officials said.

Earlier, a parked car exploded near a private hospital in the central neighborhood of Karradah, killing 11 people and wounding 13, police said. The blast damaged the Abdul-Majid hospital and other nearby buildings.

The fourth explosion was from a bomb left on a minibus in the central Rusafi area, area, killing four people and wounding six others, police said.

Also in Baghdad, four policemen were killed on Wednesday afternoon when gunmen ambushed their patrol south of the city center, police said. Six pedestrians were wounded in the gunfire.