Bomb kills 15, Bush critic Pelosi visits Baghdad

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A bomb killed 15 people and wounded 55 in the second attack in as many months on Baghdad's much-loved Friday pet fair, the latest in a string of bombings at the city's markets that have killed over 150 this week.

One of President George W. Bush's key critics in Congress -- new House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi -- met Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and other officials. An opponent of Bush's plan to send 20,000 more troops, Pelosi said she also came to applaud the courage of Americans fighting in Iraq.

A police source said witnesses believed Friday's market bomb was planted in a cardboard box that the bomber had punched with air holes to pass it off as containing birds. Parrots, canaries and more exotic pets are prime attractions at the Ghazil market.

Two months ago, three people were killed at the Friday fair, which attracts weekend sightseers in the beleaguered city.

Blood stained the ground and small birds chirped in battered cages around the small square in front of an ancient Sunni mosque. Tattered black Shi'ite prayer flags hung in the clear, still air. The population of the busy area is religiously mixed.

Newly empowered by victory at November's U.S. Congressional elections, Bush's Democrat opponents are pushing for a phased withdrawal of U.S. troops and have fiercely opposed Bush's plans to send more troops to back a big security crackdown in Baghdad.

With other U.S. lawmakers, Pelosi met U.S. and Iraqi officials including Maliki and said she came out of the meeting "with a greater understanding of each other's point of view."

Pelosi, who has accused Bush of playing politics with U.S. soldiers' lives, said she was also visiting Iraq to thank the troops and "applaud their patriotism, the sacrifice they're willing to make and the courage they're demonstrating."

With her in Baghdad was another fierce critic of the war, Representative John Murtha, a fellow Democrat and former marine.

"KILLING FIELDS"

At least 88 people were killed at the Bab al-Sharji market, near Ghazil, on Monday and bombs killed 34 around Baghdad on Thursday as Maliki warned militants from Shi'ite and Sunni camps they would have nowhere to hide from the U.S.-backed crackdown.

Dozens of tortured bodies are still being found every day.

"All those terrorists who turned the streets of Baghdad into killing fields will be targeted," Maliki's foreign minister, Hoshiyar Zebari, told CNN on Friday.

With Bush stepping down in two years, many see the planned offensive as a last U.S. push before withdrawal.

Turkey on Friday urged the United States not to leave a power vacuum when it exits Iraq nor allow the country to split, saying a divided Iraq would slip into "endless war."

"If Iraq is divided, there will be a real civil war and all the neighbors will be involved in this," Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul said during the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum held in the Alpine ski resort Davos.

Security forces are on high alert as Shi'ites prepare to mark the climax of the 10-day mourning rite of Ashura on Monday.

Many hundreds of thousands of pilgrims are expected to converge on the holy city of Kerbala, south of Baghdad, for ceremonies banned during Saddam Hussein's Sunni-dominated, secular rule and now an annual highpoint for majority Shi'ites in the political ascendant in Iraq for the first time.

Among American opponents of Bush's move to send more troops to try to secure Baghdad, some question Maliki's commitment to stopping militias loyal to fellow Shi'ite leaders. Some militias are also close to Washington's Shi'ite adversary Iran.

A looming Shi'ite-Sunni civil war in Iraq has raised sectarian tension across the Middle East, notably between mainly Sunni-ruled Arab states and non-Arab Iran.

Washington has seized several Iranians it describes as hostile agents in Iraq and vowed this month to "go after their networks," which it accuses of arming and funding militants attacking U.S. and Iraqi forces.

Bush confirmed "we will stop them" on Friday, after a report he had given orders to "kill or capture" hostile Iranians in Iraq. But he said he would not send his forces into Iran.

U.S. lawmakers are debating possible motions criticizing the decision to reinforce the 130,000-strong U.S. force in Iraq. But Congress is seen as lacking the power to block it.

(Additional reporting by Shahla al-Azzawi, Claudia Parsons, Ross Colvin and Hamza al-Badri)