A car bomber killed at least 16 people in the Iraqi city of Kufa on Tuesday, police and hospital sources said, the latest in a spate of car bombs in the Shi'ite south apparently aimed at stoking sectarian strife. One witness who said he saw the explosion said the bomber drove a minibus into an open market packed with morning shoppers. "I saw the minibus coming through the crowds. There was one person driving. He tried to park the vehicle and then it exploded. There were many bodies," Mohan Ali told said. A hospital source in Kufa said the blast, near a restaurant, killed 10 people and wounded 30. Kufa, 160 km (100 miles) south of Baghdad, is near the Shi'ite city of Najaf, one of the holiest in Shi'ite Islam. The attack bore the hallmarks of al Qaeda, which U.S. and Iraqi officials accuse of trying to tip Iraq into full-scale civil war between Shi'ites and Sunni Arabs.