As many as 20 people were killed in the main market in the Iraqi town of Baquba last month but residents have little choice but to brave the bombs and bullets to stock up on daily needs.
In this confessionally divided provincial capital just north of Baghdad, the mounting sectarian tensions that have gripped the new Iraq have spelled a spate of tit-for-tat killings of civilians as Shiite militiamen avenge attacks by Sunni insurgents, sparking a vicious circle of violence.
"It's an evil you cannot escape," screamed one elderly shopper as she ran from the bazaar after a shooting that left one man dead last week.
Gunfire, blood and screams - sights and sounds that have become all too familiar amid the market stalls. Police say between 15 and 20 people were killed in the bazaar in April alone.
It is not just shoppers that have been targetted in the worsening communal violence in the city.
Baquba police chief Ghassan Bawi said insurgents had planted 70 bombs on the city's streets in the past two weeks alone.
Of those, 40 had gone off, killing 12 people, he said.
"Drive-by shootings and other gun attacks have proved deadlier, killing nearly 40 people in the past two weeks," Bawi said.
In addition, several bullet-ridden bodies have been found dumped in and around the city, executed by unknown abductors, making the past fortnight one of the bloodiest since the US-led invasion of 2003.
The deadliest attack was on April 12, when a car bomb exploded near a Shiite mosque outside Baquba killing 20 people.
The attack was followed two days later by two car bombs that went off near Sunni mosques in an apparent tit-for-tat response.
Four people died in the two bombings which struck just after the main weekly prayers.
On April 2, a Shiite family travelling in a bus in search of their kidnapped son was ambushed and executed by gunmen.
And just last Thursday, Sunni insurgents mounted coordinated attacks on checkpoints in and around Baquba in an apparent attempt to seize control of the city from US-backed government forces.
In one attack on one of the main roads into the city, the insurgents posed as a wedding party to fool police before spraying them with bullets.
Provincial governor Rad Rashid al-Mulla imposed a two-day curfew in the face of what he described as an "attempt to seize control of the city" as fierce clashes raged between the rebels and the security forces.
At least 25 insurgents were among several dozen people killed in the violence. Another 51 suspected rebels were captured during the fighting, security sources said.
The apparent impotence of Iraq's fledgling security forces in the face of the worsening bloodshed has sparked growing anger among residents.
"All the police do is stand around in the market," complained stallholder Mohammed Abbas.
"After an incident takes place, they spray bullets into the sky, making the situation tenser and gather the bodies. That's it."
Abbas added that repeated closures of the market after attacks were costing him and other stallholders dear.
The insecurity was also scaring away shoppers, making it increasingly difficult for him to balance the books.
Fellow shopkeeper Ahmed Yas charged that increasingly police did not even bother to investigate attacks.
"If the police did any kind of investigation or observation, they would be able to control the security situation and arrest those responsible for these acts," he complained.
The city police chief admitted the security forces were facing a growing crisis of public confidence but added that was the nature of the insurgency Iraq was facing.
"The trouble is, we're facing an enemy that wants to kill the maximum number of people in shootings and explosions," Bawi said.
"They want to break the morale of people and the citizens' trust in the ability of the police to protect them."
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