Attacks have killed 62 people and wounded 250 in Iraq, including a six-car bombing of a Baghdad Shiite neighbourhood that left 46 dead. The violence, coinciding with the announcement that Iraq's parliament would meet Thursday for the first time since December elections, looked to further poison relations among the country's Shiite majority and one-time Sunni elite. The deadliest attacks targeted the poor district of Sadr City, a mostly Shiite quarter in the east of the city, as people went about their late afternoon shopping. Within minutes, two cars exploded in the Al-Ula market, followed by one in Kayara market, two in Mreidi market and one in Dagher market, the interior ministry said. A seventh car bomb was defused. The rash of bombings in Sadr City claimed the lives of 46 people and wounded 204 others, the ministry said.
Earlier on Sunday, six Iraqis were killed and 13 wounded when a roadside bomb exploded near a US army patrol near the airport, on the western outskirts of town. There was no immediate word from US forces on possible American casualties.
Two civilians were killed and six wounded when a mortar shell landed on a house in central Baghdad, and two more civilians were hurt when another mortar shell fell in an east Baghdad street. Another three civilians in a car were shot dead by unidentified gunmen in the south of the capital.
Meanwhile five Iraqi soldiers were wounded when their vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb in the centre of town. Two policemen were wounded by a roadside bomb in Dura, in the south of the city. And two men, one of them a policeman, were shot dead by unidentified gunmen in Duluiyah, 75 kilometres north of the capital.
In Moqdadiya, north-east of Baghdad, a civilian was shot dead in a cafe. A police major was also shot dead outside his home in Mahmudiya, south of Baghdad. A policeman was killed and four others wounded in a roadside bomb in Baquba, a mixed Shiite-Sunni city northeast of Baghdad. Late Saturday, two Iraqi intelligence officers were found shot dead in a car in western Baghdad, the official added.