22 January 2007 Baghdad bombings The 22 January 2007 Baghdad bombings was a terrorist attack that occurred when two powerful car bomb s ripped through the Bab Al - Sharqi market in central Baghdad , killing at least 88 people and wounding 160 others in one of the bloodiest days since the US invasion of Iraq . The attack occurred two days after the start of the 10 - day Shiite festival leading up to Ashoura . The blasts at the Baghdad market were aimed at a Shiite area and seemed timed to inflict maximum damage , occurring at noon local time , which is one of the busiest times of the day . Police officials said the blasts were so large that each of the cars carried more than 200 pounds of explosives . The explosions could be heard from the eastern banks of the nearby Tigris River . In the aftermath , the large number of bodies required workers to stack them on top of one another in wooden carts , while other victims were simply blown to pieces . Fires from the explosion engulfed at least a dozen cars , creating clouds of smoke large enough that they drifted over the Green Zone , about half a mile away . In the past , such attacks by Sunni Arab insurgents have been met by swift reprisals , a cycle of violence that left some 34 , 000 Iraqis dead last year directly because of the attacks and many more lives lost indirectly . The bombings , directed specifically at civilians , seemed intended to elicit a reprisal , much like the 23 November 2006 Sadr City bombings that killed at least 215 people . The area of the market is a stronghold of the Mahdi Army , the main Shia militia in central Iraq ; a suicide bomber killed at least 63 people in the same area last month . The bombing was followed by prolonged gun battles . The fighting could be heard across the city , although officials did not release any casualty figures from the ensuing skirmishes . At the site of the car bombings , Iraqi Army troops spotted a man on a nearby rooftop shortly after the attack , filming the carnage . According to an Iraqi Army official , the man was killed by gunfire while attempting to escape over the rooftops . The official said the man was an Egyptian and was filming the attack to use as propaganda for the Sunni insurgents . Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al - Maliki , whose government has proven incapable of ending the bloodshed , condemned the attack . He blamed the car bombs on followers of Saddam Hussein . At least 70 people were killed in a double bombing outside a Baghdad University during the previous week , an attack Maliki also blamed on Saddam ' s supporters . A UN envoy said Iraq was sliding " into the abyss of sectarianism " and urged Iraqi political and religious leaders to halt the violence . In addition to the market attacks , at least 15 people were killed and another 39 wounded in coordinated bomb and mortar attacks in the Shiite town of Khalis . Later that same day , a Sunni mosque in the Dura section of Baghdad was blown up ; there were no reports of casualties and residents said the attack was likely retribution for the bombing of a Shiite mosque in the same neighborhood during the previous week . Police confirmed that they had found 29 unidentified bodies with gunshot wounds ; altogether , more than 130 people were killed in and around the capital .