A car bomb outside a restaurant in western Baghdad today killed at least 11 people, hospital officials said.
Correspondent Mariam Karouny counted 11 bodies in the morgue of Yarmuk Hospital. Hospital officials said the bodies had been brought from the blast site.
US soldiers riding armoured vehicles cordoned off the area and firefighters doused water on burning cars. At least 10 cars were destroyed, one of them flipped upside down.
"I was just standing here talking and then I heard two huge explosions," said Humam Abdul-Hadi, who owns an electrical goods store near the bomb site. He said an ice cream restaurant had taken the brunt of the blast.
"I don't even know who they were targeting," said Abdul-Hadi, who had shrapnel wounds to the face and neck and blood spattered on his T-shirt. "They just bombed people eating ice cream."
There has been a wave of suicide car bomb attacks in the capital over the past two weeks.