Tears, blood flow as search continues for dear ones

A weeping Zainab Mustafa brought a photo of her husband to the still-smouldering site of a bloody bombing in Baghdad yesterday, seeking word of him and their two missing children.

The three had gone out the night before to buy clothes for the upcoming holiday marking the end of the holy Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, and Mustafa has not heard from them since.

The suicide car bombing in the Karrada area, which was claimed by the Islamic State group and killed at least 119 people, sparked raging fires in nearby buildings, and smoke still rose from charred structures more than 12 hours after the explosion.

"We have looked everywhere; members of my family are looking for them," said Mustafa.

The street in the Karrada area is littered with rubble, and the search for victims within the burned buildings could take days.

"The lists of victims I saw included whole families -- the father and his sons, the mother and her daughters -- whole families were wiped out by this explosion," a member of the civil defence forces said.

"We need a number of days to be able to recover the bodies of victims. It is a difficult task," he said.

Fadhel Salem is missing two of his brothers who were in the family's shop.

"I think they are still there inside the store, but I can't see anything because of the heavy smoke," he said.

Five people worked with shovels to try to find their friends at another shop where the ceiling had collapsed.

Baghdad has been hit by a number of bombings this year, but none nearly as deadly as the yesterday's attack, which combined explosives and shrapnel with raging flames.

Identifying all of the victims who are found will also be an enormous challenge.