BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A car bomb in a crowded shopping district in northern Baghdad killed 16 people and wounded 40 others on Thursday, police said, the latest in a series of attacks to strike the Iraqi capital.
Four children and four women were among the casualties from the blast next to a bus terminal in the mostly Shi'ite district of Shaab, near a popular market, they said.
On Wednesday U.S. and Iraqi security officials lauded a sharp drop in violence in Iraq, which they said was lower than any time since mid-2003, but insurgents have shown themselves still capable of launching high-profile attacks.
Persistent bombings highlight the challenges Iraqi security forces face as the United States prepares to withdraw all of its combat troops from the country by August 31, 2010.
"We heard two explosions, one was a faint one, then a much louder one," said a shopkeeper, Raed, whose store was shaken by the blast. "I saw bodies lying on the ground everywhere outside, including four or five women and a small boy."
Bombing densely packed places to maximise casualties is a favourite tactic of al Qaeda, which has lost sway over swathes of Baghdad that it used to control but is seeking to show it is undefeated. No one claimed responsibility for the blast.
An attack on a Shi'ite area could also be an attempt by the Sunni Islamist group to reignite the sectarian killing that nearly tore Iraq apart in 2006 and 2007.
Political analyst Kadhum al-Muqdidi, a professor at Baghdad University, said that if that was the aim, it was likely to fail, as few had the stomach for more sectarian bloodshed.
"The sectarian rift can't be reopened easily. I think these attacks remain isolated and their effect fleeting."
But he suggested that this bombing could be an attempt by rivals of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, whose party won many seats in January local polls on a law and order message, to make him look bad.
"Bickering between the political entities could be behind such attacks," he said.
A group of Iraqi clerics from both Sunni and Shi'ite faiths issued a joint statement in Baghdad on Thursday condemning violence and calling on Iraqis to reject militant groups.
"Those who are practicing these brutal crimes against innocent Iraqis are recruited by hostile powers bent on destroying Iraq," the statement said, not referring to any particular violent act.
On Monday, a bomb at a bus terminal in west Baghdad's Abu Ghraib district killed nine people and wounded 23, and on March 10 a suicide bomber killed at least 28 people in the same area on the outskirts of the capital.
(Reporting by Aseel Kami, Yaseen Abid Zed and Khalid al-Ansary; Writing by Tim Cocks, editing by Mark Trevelyan)