A suicide bomber detonated an explosives-packed car near a funeral procession in southeastern Baghdad on Friday, Jan 27, killing at least 28 people in the latest brazen attack since the U.S. troop withdrawal, officials said.

Police officials said the blast occurred at 11:00 am in the predominantly Shiite neighborhood of Zafaraniyah, where mourners had gathered for the funeral of a person killed the day before. They said 61 people were wounded in the attack.

Hospital officials confirmed the death toll. All officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release the information.

Salam Hussein, a 42-year-old grocery store owner in Zafaraniyah said he was watching the funeral procession, which was guarded by several police cars, when the blast blew out his store windows and injured one of his workers.

"It was a huge explosion," Hussein said. As he took his worker to the hospital, Hussein said he saw cars engulfed in flames, "human flesh scattered around and several mutilated bodies in a pool of blood" around where the attacker's car had exploded, The Associated Press reported.

Across Iraq, at least 200 people have been killed in a wave of attacks by suspected insurgents since the beginning of the year, raising concerns that the surge in violence and an escalating political crisis might deteriorate into a civil war, just weeks after the U.S. military withdrawal.