From their allies at Reuters:

Two bombs at Baghdad pet markets kill 72: police


By Paul Tait and Aws Qusay Fri Feb 1
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Bomb blasts ripped through two popular pet markets in Baghdad on Friday, killing 72 people in the deadliest attacks in the city in six months and dealing a bitter blow to Iraqi hopes that security is getting better.
Police said a female suicide bomber killed 45 people and wounded 82 at the Ghazil pet market in central Baghdad.
Another blast shortly after, caused either by a roadside bomb or a second female suicide bomber, killed 27 people and wounded 67 at a bird market in southern Baghdad, they said.
While attacks have continued to fall across Iraq in recent months, the latest blasts underscore U.S. military warnings that a return to the violence that took Iraq to the brink of sectarian civil war is still possible.
At the Ghazil market, one of Baghdad’s most popular gathering places and which has been bombed at least three times in the past year, people stared at the destruction as workers swept up body parts and blood-stained animal boxes…
One witness said the female bomber entered the market saying she had birds to sell. Scores of people gathered and then the bomb underneath her clothing went off, the witness said…
But Major-General Qassim Moussawi, spokesman for the Iraqi military in Baghdad, said in both attacks women had been loaded with explosives which were then detonated remotely.
“We found the mobiles used to detonate the women,” he said.
Ambulances tried to push through packed streets to get to Ghazil after the blast, which occurred in almost exactly the same spot as a bombing which killed 13 people on November 23.
Police and civil defense officials piled the wounded into wheelbarrows, cars and the back of pick-up trucks while U.S. soldiers helped secure the area, witnesses said. Officials at nearby hospitals said they struggled to cope with the wounded…
The Ghazil market only opens on Fridays and is a popular spectacle visited by hundreds of Baghdadis. It sells a colorful range of creatures from guard dogs and monkeys to parrots, pigeons and tropical fish.
The November blast, caused by a bomb hidden inside a box of birds, was a big psychological blow for residents who had just begun returning to the streets after security crackdowns last year helped arrest a slide towards all-out sectarian civil war.
The market has been bombed several times, with about 10 people killed in two separate blasts there in January and February last year. The latest blast was the worst single attack in Baghdad for six months. Fifty people were killed when a fuel truck exploded in the capital on August 1 last year…

They must have been really devout believers in their religion of peace.
And, again, the terrorists are using women bombers because they cannot be searched by men without offending the delicate Muslim sensibilities. Perhaps that rule should be changed.
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