The death toll rose to 16 people killed and more than 50 others wounded in a car bomb blast at a busy market in a town near the Iraqi capital on Thursday, local police said.

A car parking at a vegetable market in Aziziya town, some 80 km southeast of Baghdad, went off at midmorning, a police source in the town told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

"Our latest report said there are 16 civilians killed and more than 50 others wounded, some of them in critical conditions," the source said.

Iraqi security forces cordoned off the area while ambulances and civilian cars evacuated wounded people to the medical center of the town, he said.

Earlier, another police source said 15 people were killed and 25 others wounded in the blast.

Also on Thursday, another car bomb detonated near a mosque in Baghdad's southeastern neighborhood of the al-Amin, killing six and wounding ten others, the police said.

Violence rages in Iraq despite the government's measures to crack down on illegal militia and the U.S. decision to send 21,000 more soldiers to the war-torn country.

Source: Xinhua