BAGHDAD — A parked car bomb ripped through a crowded outdoor market in southwestern Baghdad today, killing 25 people despite a 3-month-old security crackdown meant to reduce violence in the capital.

At least 60 people were wounded in the blast in the Shiite-dominated neighborhood of Amil. Nearby buildings were badly damaged and set ablaze, while others were reduced to rubble. Residents ran through the streets with buckets and pots of water, while others frantically tore through the rubble, looking for survivors. Groups of men carried bodies wrapped in tarps out of the damaged buildings.

"There were four women around my stall when we heard a loud explosion, which threw me many meters away from my stall," said Fadhil Hussein, 32, who sells spices in the market and suffered shrapnel wounds in his back and head. "I found myself in a pickup truck with other people. Some of them were bleeding and yelling."

The street was filled with water, presumably from a water main that burst in the explosion.

Sami Hussein, 25, was heading to the market with her 5-year old son when she heard the blast, "followed by gray and black smoke, which engulfed the market and made me to fall on the ground."

She suffered shrapnel wounds in her face and legs.

"I lost my son, and have no idea about his fate," she said. Medical officials at the hospital said her son had been killed in the explosion.

The neighborhood has seen an increase in violence in recent weeks, and Sunni politicians expressed fears that Shiite militiamen had resumed their campaign of sectarian cleansing in Amil and nearby neighborhoods of southwestern Baghdad.

The blast came amid the U.S. and Iraqi security operation meant to flush out insurgents and restore order to Baghdad. However deadly attacks targeting civilians and police have continued.

U.S. military officials say that insurgent groups, feeling the pressure from the crackdown, have hit back by stepping up their car bombing attacks with their devastating death tolls. A May 6 bombing in a market in the neighboring Baiyaa district, killed 30 people and wounded 80 others.

Violence struck across the capital Tuesday.

A few minutes before the bombing in Amil, which adjoins the neighborhood where the May 6 blast occurred, gunmen in two cars drove through the nearby Khadra neighborhood and ambushed a civilian car carrying three plainclothes police officers from the major crimes unit, killing two and wounding the third, police said.

Police and other Iraqi security officers have been heavily targeted by insurgents, who accuse them of collaborating with U.S.-led forces in the country.