Iraq Blasts kill at least 47 in Shiite locale

? Car bombs and a rocket barrage struck a crowded predominantly Shiite neighborhood in Baghdad late Sunday, killing at least 47 people and wounding at least 148, authorities said.

The attack on the Zafraniyah neighborhood in southern Baghdad began about 7:15 p.m. with two car bombs and a barrage of an estimated nine rockets, Defense Ministry spokesman Col. Saddoun Abu al-Ula said.

He said the barrage heavily damaged three buildings, including a multistory apartment house that collapsed. Al-Ula said the rockets appeared to have been fired from Dora, one of the mostly Sunni districts targeted by U.S. troops in a new security crackdown against sectarian violence in the capital.

Police Lt. Thaer Mahmoud said 47 people were killed and 148 were wounded.

The complex style of the assault was similar to a July 27 attack of mortars, rockets and car bombs on another mostly Shiite district, Karradah, which killed 31 people. Police said the rockets and mortars that struck Karradah also were fired from Dora.

A Sunni extremist group, the al-Sahaba Soldiers, claimed responsibility for the Karradah attack to punish Shiites for supporting the “crusaders,” or Americans, and the “treacherous” Iraqi government.

Muhanna Yassin, who lives in Zafraniyah, said the attack left the neighborhood “a total mess” with “bodies of the dead and injured scattered around in the streets – old, young, women and children.”

“The ground shook underneath us and there was chaos everywhere,” he said in a telephone interview. “Everyone was dazed and confused, looking for their families. Some children and grown-ups were crying. I can’t even begin describing their state.”

The multiple attacks were part of the grisly pattern of Sunni-Shiite violence that American officials consider the greatest threat to Iraq’s stability more than three years after the U.S.-led invasion toppled Saddam Hussein’s regime.

U.S. commanders are sending nearly 12,000 U.S. and Iraqi soldiers into the capital to curb the surge of sectarian violence, which was described by the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, on Sunday as “the principal problem here.”

“I believe that the sectarian violence is serious. I believe the Iraqis have overcome challenges before … and they can overcome this as well,” Khalilzad said on CNN.