A car bomb attack at a crowded market in a poor Shi'ite district of eastern Baghdad killed at least 66 people and injured 87 on Saturday, police sources said. According to Reuters, the parked car went off as a police patrol passed, causing casualties among the police and civilians at the market in Sadr City.
The exploded at 10 a.m., damaging several other cars and scorching several shops, police Col. Hassan Jaloob said.
Also Saturday, gunmen kidnapped a Sunni female member of parliament in a Shiite area of the capital, officials said. Lawmaker Tayseer Mashhadani was traveling from nearby Diyala province in a three-car convoy to attend a parliament session Sunday in Baghdad when her car was stopped by gunmen in the east of the city, officials said.
Mashhadani is a member of the Iraqi Islamic Party, which is part of the Iraqi Accordance Front, a Sunni bloc that holds 44 seats in the 275-member parliament.
Iraqi police also found a grave of several men who were apparently shot to death more than a month ago in Baghdad. Lt. Thaer Mahmoud said police had recovered at least six badly decomposed bodies in the grave, located in a Baghdad area notorious for sectarian killings.
In other violence Saturday, a former senior police officer under Saddam Hussein's regime was killed in a drive-by shooting. Elsewhere, Iraqi soldiers found the bodies of three soldiers who were abducted Friday, as well as an unidentified man, near the northern city of Kirkuk. Two other soldiers were still missing.
Gunmen also killed a policeman in a drive-by shooting in the center of Kirkuk.
