After Months of Relative Calm, 2 Deadly Blasts Rock Baghdad

U.S. military officials said seven people were killed and 23 others wounded in the Ghazil market attack, while Iraqi police put the toll much higher: 45 killed and 105 wounded.

As the use of car bombs has declined in recent months, the number of suicide vest attacks has risen.

"Their car bomb capabilities have been badly disrupted, so now, as we saw today and as we've seen for some time, they are moving toward suicide vests, in this case suicide vests worn by women," Ryan C. Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, told the Associated Press. "No one's doing victory dances, and today's horrific bombings illustrate why that's the case."

After the bombing, as firefighters hosed down the bloody pavement and a bulldozer nudged away the debris, dozens of people milled around the site of the explosion. The mood was strangely casual. A group of boys played soccer in the street a few hundred yards from the bomb site. Old men showed off their shrapnel wounds from previous bombings at the market. A veterinarian who was buying fluorescent light bulbs at the market said the scene was, in fact, quite normal.

"The difference is the birds are targeted now," said Albert Sabah, 28, with a bit of black humor. "Maybe they want to wipe out bird flu."

There was nonetheless an edgy tension. U.S. and Iraqi armored Humvees prowled through the market. A cellphone video circulated among the crowd at the Ghazil market showing the alleged bomber's head being picked up by her long brown hair and put in a white shopping bag. A man selling cats shooed away a young boy carrying a plastic bag because he was afraid it might be a bomb. Many vendors said they felt helpless to defend themselves.

"I work with animals, I live off of animals, this is what my father and my grandfather did," said Wasfi Abed Yasin, 47, who was selling Dobermans, which he wanted to train to sniff for bombs. "I don't know how to do any other job."

Sayid Abdul Hafidh, who moved from Egypt to Baghdad more than two decades ago, sells power adapters from a sidewalk table directly across from the blast site. When the bomb exploded, the window glass of the building behind him shattered and fell down on top of him.

"I want to live. I want to eat," he said. "You know the circumstances and how difficult the security situation is. The difficulties push you to work and forget about the risks. We are doing nothing wrong; we are just selling our goods and sitting here at God's gate."

For centuries the Ghazil market has held a central place in the culture of the city, first as a weaver's market during the time of the Islamic caliphate and in recent years as a gathering point for vendors of animals exotic and mundane. While many Shiites live in the area around the market -- posters of Shiite imams and the family of cleric Moqtada al-Sadr adorn the walls -- it attracts a mix of people from across the city and surrounding provinces.

Shoppers and vendors said the market was a target primarily because it attracts a large crowd of civilians and is not rigorously guarded. They said untrained, U.S.-financed local gunmen, known as the "awakening" forces, help guard the market. "They were searching people for a while and then they stopped," Yasin said. "They are not professionals, they just joke around."

"This used to be a beautiful market, a beautiful business, and now it's destroyed," he said.