A weeklong string of bombings has further disrupted life in Baghdad, spreading fear among the city's 7 million residents awaiting a planned US-backed offensive to tighten the government's fragile grip over its largely lawless capital.

Meanwhile, US air strikes killed 14 militants northeast of Baghdad yesterday and also destroyed a suspected hideout for foreign fighters, the military said.

A statement said 14 "terrorists" were killed as ground troops supported by aircraft raided a building south of Baquba, the flashpoint capital of Iraq's confessionally divided province of Diyala.

"As ground forces approached the objective building, several terrorists began to flee the targeted and surrounding buildings," the statement said.

"Ground forces called for close air support resulting in 14 enemy fighters killed during the air strike."

The statement said that foreigners who had travelled to Iraq to join the insurgency were being organized in the area to attack government and coalition troops.

"Additionally, coalition aircraft delivered precision munitions and destroyed the building to prevent it from further use as a terrorist safe haven."

Yesterday's attacks struck New Baghdad in the east of the capital, targeting weekend shoppers thronging shops and market stalls selling fruit and exotic birds.

A Reuters journalist saw eight bodies being loaded into ambulances and body parts lying in the street in the aftermath of the explosions.

Dead birds lay in cages in an area that appeared to have been reserved for a bird market. Several cars were ablaze. Police said 15 people had been killed and 55 wounded in the quick-fire blasts at a street intersection.

One police officer said the blasts were both the work of suicide bombers in cars, while another said there had been one suicide bomb and one parked car had detonated.

In the worst attack this week, 88 people were killed in twin car bomb blasts in the Bab al-Sharji market in central Baghdad, an area home to both Sunni Arab and Shia traders.

Bombers also struck a Shia shopping area in central Karrada district on Thursday, killing 26, and on Friday killed 15 people in an attack on the city's famous pet market.

Shia Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has blamed many of the bombings on Sunni Arab militants and supporters of former President Saddam Hussein, whose botched execution last month angered many fellow members of his minority Sunni sect.

VIOLENCE UNRELENTING
US forces killed 14 insurgents in an air strike early yestrerday in an area near Baghdad where Sunni insurgents are battling Iraqi government and US troops.

The US military said the air strike was launched after some militants had tried to escape troops closing in on them.

Despite Maliki's announcement earlier this month of a new offensive to regain control of Baghdad's streets from sectarian death squads, violence has continued unabated, with militants defiantly continuing to kill scores of people every week.

Gunmen dressed in police commando uniforms abducted eight people from a central Baghdad computer store on Saturday in the latest mass kidnapping to hit the Iraqi capital, police said.

Gunmen dragged out employees from the store, situated on a main road, and bundled them into waiting cars. There had been a relative lull in such mass abductions in recent weeks.

President Bush is sending more than 20,000 reinforcements to Iraq, despite strong public opposition at home, to curb unrelenting sectarian violence that has defied previous offensives by the US military and Iraqi government.

Most of the US troops are to be sent to Baghdad, seen as the epicenter of the violence that is fueled on the one hand by Shia militias linked to parties in Maliki's government, and Sunni Arab militants, including al Qaeda, on the other.

Washington has identified the Mehdi Army, a militia loyal to radical Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, as the greatest threat to security in Iraq and has warned that the success of Maliki's plan depends on his going after Shia militias with as much determination as he deals with Sunni Arab insurgents.