United States soldiers of the Delta company, 2nd Battalion, 12th Cavalry Regiment, give first aid to wounded Iraqi army soldier minutes after a roadside bomb exploded next to their armoured vehicle in Baghdad's north-west Sunni neighbourhood of Ghazali yesterday. Three Iraqi soldiers were wounded according to a Reuters witness. - Reuters

BAGHDAD, Iraq (Reuters):

Suicide bombers killed more than 130 people in a crowded market in a Shi'ite district of Baghdad and a mainly Shi'ite town yesterday in an upsurge in the sectarian violence that threatens all-out civil war.

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, a Shi'ite, called for restraint and urged Iraqis to work with security forces to prevent the violence from spiralling out of control.

Bombs earlier this week in northern Iraq sparked mass reprisal killings.

One suicide bomber, possibly two, killed 62 people in a market in the Shaab district of northern Baghdad, police sources said, in what appeared to be the latest of a string of attacks on Shi'ite districts and towns blamed on al Qaeda.

"It is impossible to tell the exact number of dead because we are basically counting body parts," said a Health Ministry official in Baghdad, who asked not to be named.

Most of the victims were women and children, who had been out shopping in the crowded market before the start of the nightly curfew, he said.

At about the same time, three suicide car bombs exploded within minutes of each other in Khalis, 80 km (50 miles) north of Baghdad, killing 53 people and wounding 103, police said.

There has been a spike in violence, particularly outside the Iraqi capital, in recent days. Iraq is gripped by rampant violence between majority Shi'ites and minority Sunnis that has killed tens of thousands in the past year.

On Tuesday two truck bombs killed 85 people in a Shi'ite area of Tal Afar in northern Iraq. In the hours after those blasts Shi'ite gunmen, including police, shot dead up to 70 Sunni Arab men in reprisal.

The top U.S. commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, confirmed on Thursday police appeared to have carried out "retribution killings" after the bombings, which he blamed on al Qaeda. Iraq's Sunni vice-president urged the Shi'ite-led government to do more to purge the security forces of militias.

MALIKI