A suicide car bomb exploded at a market in Baghdad on Thursday, killing 14 people in escalating violence that has claimed more than 400 lives since a new government was named two weeks ago. In a scene that has become all too familiar in the streets of Iraq, frantic young men, some crying, pushed wooden carts carrying charred bodies of women and men. Sirens wailed as flames and black smoke rose skywards over mangled market stalls and cars in the New Baghdad district. The blast followed a series of suicide bomb attacks on Wednesday that killed at least 71 people. The U.S. military put the death toll at 14. Iraqi police and the U.S. military said 56 people were also wounded. Three U.S. soldiers were also killed on Thursday in bomb attacks in Baghdad and to the north and south of the capital. Iraq has witnessed a dramatic rise in bloodshed since its first democratically elected government was formed on April 28, raising fears of civil war if the country's new leaders do not deliver on promises of stability soon, Reuters said. "There are families in the building. Most of them are wounded," a medical worker yelled over a mobile telephone as an elderly couple with bloodied heads sat in his ambulance, the news agency said. --SP 2241 Local Time 1941 GMT
