BAGHDAD, Aug 13: Bombers killed at least 47 people and injured 148 more on Sunday in a coordinated series of blasts which demolished two buildings in a commercial district of Baghdad, a defence official said.

“One building and one house collapsed completely,” the official told AFP after at least five explosions ripped through the Zafaraniyah district of southeastern Baghdad.

“Two more buildings were seriously damaged,” he added.

A witness and a security official said unidentified attackers blitzed the Al-Qubyasi market — in a mixed area inhabited by Shias, Sunnis and Christians — in a way designed to maximise casualties.

The carnage began when a Katyusha rocket demolished a four-storey building containing residences and shops, the interior ministry official said.

Five minutes later, as bystanders rushed to drag the dead and wounded from the rubble, a car bomb detonated about 100 metres (yards) away, shattering shop fronts and scattering wounded people across the street.

A medical official at the scene told AFP that bodies were trapped in the remains of the building.

“There are dozens of bodies in the street. The building just collapsed. It was four storeys, with homes and shops. Civil defence personnel are trying to get bodies out of the building. The shops underneath are destroyed,” he said.

Less than an hour later another bomb attack brought down a second building nearby and — again after local people gathered at the site — a suicide bomber on a motorbike ploughed into the crowd and blew himself up.

Meanwhile, a fifth bomb attack targeted a police patrol on its way to the scene, injuring three officers, the official said.

Iraqi forces detained six suspects in the restive city of Ramadi on Saturday, after a day of intense fighting between well-organised gangs and US troops left 24 attackers dead.

Nine more “suspected terrorists” were picked up in the northern city of Mosul and two in Samarra, one of them Sudanese, the government said.

US forces said they detained a “key terrorist cell leader” linked to a recent bombing of a marketplace in Mahmudiyah, south of Baghdad, which killed more than 40 people.

“This is the third top member of this violent and elusive terrorist cell we have detained in recent weeks,” said Colonel Todd Ebel, commander of the 2nd Brigade of the 101st Airborne Division.

Maliki’s office said security forces had captured 16 suspects in Maliki’s hometown of Hindiyah, south of Baghdad.

“They were planning to attack, kidnap or assassinate close relatives of Prime Minister Maliki,” a statement said.

“They confessed to crimes such as murder, rape and an attack on a police station in Mahmudiyah which killed six officers.

“One member of this gang confessed to blowing up 10 car bombs in Baghdad,” the statement said, adding that the suspects’ case files would be transferred to Karbala for prosecution.

Iraqi forces also detained five suspects in an early morning raid on Sunday on the building of the health ministry.

“Acting on an Iraqi citizen’s tip regarding kidnap victims, Iraqi forces with US advisers searched the Ministry of Health at about 2:30am and detained five for further questioning,” an official from the US-led coalition said.

“It is for the benefit of the Iraqi people that these forces conducted the search and detained the suspects,” said the military official.—AFP