Friday in Baghdad - Female bombers blown up over 70 killed hundreds injured

2 female suicidalist bombers exploded in Baghdad today , the first was in al-Ghazi market which has been attacked 5 times since June 2006 . The explosion killed at least 46 people and wounded 82 others. The popular market only opens on Fridays and is a popular spectacle where you buy animals ranging from guard dogs and monkeys to parrots, pigeons and tropical fish.

In a S. Baghdad market another female suicidalist exploded 20 minutes later and killed at least 27 people and wounded 67 others.

But Major-General Qassim Moussawi, spokesman for the Iraqi military in Baghdad said the bombs were exploded remotely using mobile phones, which they had found.

The LA Times reports according to U.S. military statistics, since October, the use of suicide vests has doubled across the country as a response to increased vehicle checkpoints. At least 6 women are known to have blown themselves up since November, including the two today.

Yesterday , rockets slammed into a British base in southern Iraq, wounding at least two British soldiers and killing a number of Iraqi civilian workers outside the entry gates. In Baghdad, a parked car bomb killed at least three people and wounded civilians nearby.

Four other roadside bombings in Baghdad yesterday killed least seven people and wounded six others.

Al-Forat TV reports that an Iraqi television crew was on assignment to report on the second anniversary of the February 2006 bombing of the Shiite shrine in Samara, 95 kilometres north of Baghdad were hit by a roadside bomb. The cameraman Alaa Abdul-Karim al-Fartoosi and his driver were killed, female correspondent Fatima Al-Hassina and camera assistant Haidar Kadhem, traveling with them were wounded. Al-Forat is the mouthpiece of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC), a Shiite political party.

It was on this same stretch of road near al-Balad that Atwar Bahjat of Al-Arabiya TV and her crew were kidnapped and murdered in 2006.

Elsewhere Egyptian news station Dajla TV crews were roughed up by police yesterday in Diyala province, northeast of the capital - cameraman Adnan Khader and reporter Sawssan Al-Dulaymi, were beaten and briefly detained by police officers in Baladruz, a town 30 km outside Baquba, for filming police trying to get fuel from a service station without waiting in line.

Iraqi government figures claimed to show that 466 Iraqi civilians had died violently in January, a reduction of 76% on the 1,971 killed in January 2007.

New York based media advocacy group, The Committee to Protect Journalists, lists at least 125 journalists and 49 media support staffers killed since the war began, with about 85 per cent of that number Iraqis.

Paris-based Reporters Without Borders, report at least 207 journalists and media workers killed in Iraq since the illegal U.S.-led invasion in March 2003.

UPDATE : Saturday - we are now being told the 2 women were Down's syndrome - truth or further media / political demonisation ? Next stop babies used as bombs ?

The NYT has a grisly report ..." Maj. Gen. Abdul Kareem al-Ezzi, a senior officer in the Ministry of Interior police commandos, said officials at the Ghazil market concluded after studying the bomber’s severed head that she had Down syndrome. But Iraqi officials have made similar claims in the past, and it was not immediately clear whether the bomber’s head could have been distorted by the blast."