“This is simply an evil act,” he said.
In the bombing, some victims burned to death or died from smoke inhalation in the apartment building, according to an Interior Ministry official. Bystanders climbed onto rooftops 20 to 30 yards away to gather flesh strewn by the force of the blast. Iraqi policemen stacked bodies several feet high in a pickup truck, but some fell out of the truckbed when they drove away. Other people rushed to the street to drape the bodies with sheets.
Interior Ministry officials said the death toll, which was expected to grow, was the worst for any attack in Baghdad since March 6, when two bombs in the Karada shopping district killed more than 60 people.
At Kadhimiya Hospital, frantic relatives unable to find out what happened to family members cursed the Iraqi government for allowing the blast and called on God for revenge. At the hospital morgue, victims were placed in two rooms: one for bodies that were recognizable and could be examined by relatives, and one for charred and unidentifiable remains.
Huriya once had a large population of Sunnis, but after the American-led invasion, Shiite militias and death squads in the neighborhood killed or drove out thousands of Sunnis. The raw and unresolved emotions from the bloodshed and convulsions that swept the district during those years poured out after Tuesday’s attack.
But even amid the rage and anger, some residents said the solution was not vengeance, but for the neighborhood to go back to the way it was before the death squads  when Iraqis lived together regardless of sect.
“Don’t think we like the Mahdi Army,” said Jassim Abbas, a resident. “I want the Sunnis to come back, so we won’t be an easy target for the terrorists.”
The blast site was at the heart of the market that was the scene of two huge explosions in 2005 and 2006 that killed a total of more than 100 people.
A photo of a previous bombing in Iraq
A bombing in the Iraqi province of Diyala  has killed 15 people, according to local officials. The suicide bomb exploded at the entrance to a local government centre in the city of Baquba, which is one of the most deadly areas in Iraq. 39 people were also wounded by the attack.

An anonymous witness of the blast described the bomber. "I heard some of the injured people saying they saw a woman wearing a black robe blow herself up."

This attack comes after a bombing on Tuesday killed 51 people, according to local police. That bomb exploded near a bus stop in the Hurriya area, which is mainly populated with Shia Muslims. 75 people were also wounded in Tuesday's attack, which was the deadliest in the area for three months.