Iraq Watch: July 1, 2006

Scores Killed in Sadr City Car Bombing

A massive car bomb blast rocked the Baghdad Shiite slum of Sadr City on Saturday killing at least 66 people and wounding over 100. The car bomb detonated around 10:00 a.m. near an outdoor marketplace bustling with shoppers.

A little-known militant group calling themselves the "Supporters of the Sunni People" claimed responsibility for the bloody attack.

The force of the blast sent debris flying in the air for hundreds of yards. A thick cloud of black smoke protruding from the scene of the bombing could be seen rising slowly across the Baghdad horizon.

Angry residents hurled rocks at American and Iraqi forces who arrived at the scene of the blast.

Also Saturday, gunmen kidnapped Sunni MP Tayseer al-Mashhadani along with seven of her bodyguards at a makeshift checkpoint in the eastern Baghdad neighborhood of Shaab. Al-Mashhadani is a member of the Iraqi Islamic Party (IIP), the largest Sunni political party in Iraq.

Elsewhere, police discovered the bodies of six men Saturday in the capital's volatile Dora district while the bodies of four kidnapped Iraqi soldiers were found in Kirkuk.

A suicide car bomber, meanwhile, killed two Iraqi policemen and injured six others in Mosul.