The surge is on

This may not be quite the surge Bush was talking about, but it certainly is the one most everyone else expected.

Thunderous car bombs shattered a crowded marketplace in the heart of Baghdad on Monday, triggering secondary explosions, engulfing an eight-story building in flames and killing at least 78 people in the latest in a series of similar attacks aimed at the country's Shiite majority.

The blasts in three parked cars obliterated shops and stalls and left bodies scattered among mannequins and other debris in pools of blood. Dense smoke blackened the area and rose hundreds of feet from the market district on the east bank of the Tigris River. Small fires, fueled by clothing and other goods, burned for hours in the rubble-strewn street as firefighters battled blazes in two buildings.

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