BAGHDAD — Two coordinated bomb blasts blamed on al Qaeda killed 55 people in a crowded Baghdad shopping area on Thursday, on the day the U.S. military said it was withdrawing 2,000 troops from the Iraqi capital. Police said a roadside bomb exploded on a street in the central Karrada district where vendors gather to sell their wares and which many people visit on a Thursday at the start of the Muslim weekend. Minutes later, after Iraqi security forces and other people had gathered following the initial blast, a suicide bomber detonated a second larger device, police said. It was one of the bloodiest days in the capital in recent months, since extra U.S. troops were sent to Iraq to quell raging sectarian violence and U.S. commanders embraced new counter-insurgency tactics. ‘Terrorists of the al Qaeda network targeted innocent people again,’ Major-General Qassim Moussawi, spokesman for Iraqi security operations in Baghdad, told state TV. He said the victims were from all Iraq’s sects and ethnic groups. He earlier told Reuters women and children were among the casualties. A witness at the site of the bombings in a predominantly Shi’ite area of the capital said […]