Baghdad bomb kills at least nine in market blast

The blast near a restaurant in the mainly Shi'ite Shula district was the first serious attack on the Iraqi capital since mid-May when a suicide bomber hit a police checkpoint.

Witnesses and police said the suspected bomber left a vegetable delivery truck packed with explosives at the market place minutes before it detonated.

"The pickup truck came into the market and the driver left it saying he was going to get people to unload the vegetables," Haider Fadhil, one of the wounded victims said from a nearby hospital. "It was a huge explosion, I was knocked out and woke up in a car on my way to hospital."

Violence in Iraq has fallen sharply since the height of the sectarian slaughter triggered a few years after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein. Suicide bombings and blasts claimed hundreds of lives daily in 2006-2007.

Since the last U.S. troops left in Iraq in December, Sunni Islamists have often targeted local security forces and government buildings, but have also sought out Shi'ite victims in an attempt to stir sectarian tensions.

(Reporting by Baghdad newsroom; Writing by Patrick Markey; Editing by Alison Williams)