A PARKED car bomb struck a popular outdoor market yesterday in the Shi'ite slum of Sadr City in Baghdad, killing at least 66 people and wounding dozens, authorities said. It was the bloodiest attack to hit Iraq since the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

The blast, which occurred at about 10am when the market was packed with shoppers, devastated the stalls where food and clothes are peddled and sent up a plume of grey smoke.

Flames shot out the windows of several scorched cars.

Ambulances rushed to the scene and carried the victims to hospitals, where men cradled crying babies as doctors applied bandages to the infants. Some 87 people were wounded.

Mexicans vote for a new president

MEXICANS polarised by a presidential campaign will vote tomorrow either to elect another in Latin America's rising tide of charismatic left-wing leaders or a conservative who favours free trade and globalisation.

With the left's Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and conservative Felipe Calderon running neckand-neck, the elections . . .which will also decide both houses of congress, five governors seats and local posts . . . hinge on class divisions that have seldom been talked about so openly in Mexican politics.

For 71 years, until President Vicente Fox's victory in 2000, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) ruled Mexico by claiming to represent all economic classes.

China opens major railway to Tibet

CHINA opened the first train service to Tibet on the world's highest railway yesterday, a controversial engineering marvel meant to bind the restive region to China.

President Hu Jintao cut a giant red ribbon at a nationally-televised ceremony in the western city of Golmud as the first train left for the Tibetan capital of Lhasa.

"This is a magnificent feat by the Chinese people, and also a miracle in world railway history, " Hu told an audience that included yellow-helmeted workers who built the line.

African leaders to discuss Darfur

AFRICAN leaders meeting this weekend are expected to press Sudan to accept United Nations peacekeepers in the conflict-wracked Darfur region, debate the rise of a hardline Islamic regime in Somalia and consider a proposal aimed at keeping presidents from installing themselves for life.

Also on the agenda for this weekend's African Union summit in Banjul, Gambia, is illegal migration amid a wave of undocumented Africans trying to reach Europe via risky sea or desert voyages.