Twenty-eight people were wounded in the Baghdad market bombing after the government lifted a daytime traffic ban it imposed on Friday amid fears of alQaeda reprisals for the Zarqawi killing in US air raids on Wednesday north of Baghdad.

"A bomb was left in a plastic bag here and many people were wounded, including a child, " said a boy standing near the site of the blast in a mainly Shiite Muslim area.

Police said that insurgents targeted a police patrol in the busy al-Sadriya vegetable market, but only civilians died. Insurgents often mount such attacks as part of a campaign to topple the US-backed, Shiite-led government.

In the northern city of Mosul, gunmen shot dead five butchers in their shops, police sources said, giving no details.

Followers of Zarqawi, blamed for some of Iraq's most savage attacks since the US-led 2003 invasion toppled Saddam Hussein, vowed to carry on with the attacks after his death.

The US military took reporters to the site where Zarqawi was killed in the village of Hibhib yesterday.

Looking over the rubble of the house where the country's most-wanted man may have been plotting more suicide bombs, an Iraqi soldier said he felt a great sense of relief.

Separately, gunmen kidnapped a senior Iraqi oil official in Baghdad as he was returning home from work, the oil ministry's spokesman said.

Muthanna al-Badri, director general of state company for oil projects, or SCOP, was kidnapped on Thursday while he was driving from the ministry to his home in the predominantly Sunni Arab neighbourhood of Azamiyah in north Baghdad, ministry spokesman Assem Jihad said.