(07-02) 04:00 PDT Baghdad -- A truck bomb killed at least 66 people and injured more than 100 on a market street in the Shiite Muslim heart of Baghdad on Saturday, the deadliest such attack since Iraq's new national-unity government took office in May.
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government, which is attempting to end sectarian bloodshed through force and conciliation, had so far escaped the high-fatality bombings that were a regular fixture under the previous government.
But Saturday's massive bomb -- powerful enough to hurl bodies of shoppers onto the roofs of high-rise buildings surrounding the market in the Sadr City district -- drew angry denunciations from survivors, suggesting that Iraqis could quickly sour on al-Maliki's initiatives if insurgent attacks once again begin claiming dozens of lives at a time.
In Sadr City, home to more than 2 million Shiites and scene of Saturday's bombing, angry survivors made clear how quickly a resurgence of bomb attacks -- typically blamed on Sunni Arab insurgent groups -- could undermine government efforts to overcome sectarian divisions.
"They called for unity?" demanded a man who identified himself as Abu Hassan al-Thahabi, his hands and feet blackened with soot and grease from pulling the dead and injured out of the wreckage of the bombing. "This proves to the Shiites that there is no unity."
The blast blew out windows, ripped doors from their hinges and set ablaze rows of cars. Afterward, small carts used by children to carry goods for shoppers lay wrecked in the dusty street among other debris: metal, human flesh and shattered vegetables.
"Even the animals were the victims of their brutality," said Hanoon Thamir, 47. "I saw an injured horse bleeding and kicking from the pain of its injuries until it died."
Saturday's bombing was the deadliest since a U.S. air strike killed the most prominent leader of the Sunni insurgency, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, on June 7.
A statement posted Saturday on the Internet claimed responsibility for the Sadr City blast in the name of the "Sunna Supporters Group" in retaliation for Shiite attacks on Sunnis. The statement's authenticity could not be verified.
Even before al-Zarqawi's killing, massive bombings like Saturday's had become less frequent. The gradual decrease was attributed to several factors, including better defenses against bombings and intense, often deadly pressure on the Sunni minority, leaving some insurgent groups more willing to try political solutions.
At the same time, the frequency of smaller multiple-fatality bombings reached its highest point of the war, according to the Brookings Institution. And sectarian killings -- blamed largely on Shiite militias with ties to the government -- have left an average of more than 1,000 victims at Baghdad's main morgue each month since February.
The surge in sectarian killings brought greater U.S. military pressure on Shiite religious militias, notably the Mahdi Army loyal to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
Al-Thahabi, an official in al-Sadr's movement, complained the Mahdi Army's usual checkpoints would have stopped Saturday's truck bomb, but militia members had abandoned them that morning when they saw U.S. troops in the area.
Al-Sadr officials said the bomb -- a mix of explosives and artillery shells, with ball bearings nearly the size of marbles and scrap metal added for shrapnel -- was hidden in a truck under a load of fruit. The truck, with a suicide driver at the wheel, blew up on a street crowded on both sides with shops and market stalls, leaving a crater the size of a wading pool in the pavement.
Elsewhere on Saturday, Sunni legislator Tayseer Mashhadani and her four bodyguards were kidnapped on the road from Baquba to Baghdad. According to her political group, 30 armed men manning a checkpoint stopped her convoy, disarmed and abducted everyone -- except one guard who managed to escape.
The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad condemned the kidnapping. "Acts such as the abduction of Ms. Mashhadani have no justification," a statement said. "They aim simply to terrify innocent Iraqis and provoke further conflict."
In addition to the Sadr City bombing, violence claimed the lives of at least 15 other people, and authorities reported the discovery of 26 bodies in three locations Saturday. The U.S. military said two troops died Saturday of nonhostile causes.
In southern Baghdad, police discovered a grave containing 16 people who had been killed recently. Two other people were found in the southern Dora neighborhood, and eight additional bodies were discovered on the bank of the Euphrates River near Musayab. Some of victims were soldiers, others civilians, and all showed signs of torture.
Two roadside bombs killed three police officers and injured five people in separate attacks in the New Baghdad neighborhood of eastern Baghdad.
In separate attacks in western neighborhoods, gunmen killed an engineer, a taxi driver and a 20-year-old waiting in line for gasoline in Yarmouk. North of the capital, in the restive Diyala province, gunmen fired at three brothers and two children inside a barbershop. The brothers were killed, but the barber and the children survived, authorities said.
On the road between Tikrit and Kirkuk, armed men in a convoy of 10 cars attacked a checkpoint, killing five Iraqi soldiers and abducting three others, according to an Iraqi army official. Two police officers and two civilians were injured in a drive-by attack on a police patrol in Kirkuk itself, according to Iraqi authorities.
Gunmen also killed Alla Khaled, a traffic policeman, at the city's Festival Square. Friends and relatives said Khaled was buried in a suit he had just bought -- intended for his wedding the following day.
This article appeared on page A - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle
A suicide bomber exploded a truck bomb in the crowded Al-Ula market in Sadr City in Baghdad on Saturday, killing 66 people and injuring over a 100.

'At the beginning of this market, the criminal blew up his dynamite-packed truck after trying to go over the pavement,' said Iraq's Deputy Health Minister Sabah al-Hussein. 

The explosion happened when a police patrol was passing by and caused heavy casualties in the morning market rush. Some shoppers were sent flying on top of nearby two-storey buildings.

The force of the blast left a large crater and wreckage of blown-out cars and windowless buildings. Rescuers were left to pick through a sickening scene of human remains mixed in with exploded vegetable matter and dead animals.

Sadr City, a Shiite city of two million in which religious leader Moqtada Sadr has found popular support, had many times before been targeted by Sunni terrorists who were blamed by some residents for this attack.

It was the deadliest bombing of civilians since Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government assumed responsibility for domestic security in May 2006.

Experts said the truck bomb was a lethal concoction of explosives, shells and shrapnel hidden under a consignment of fruit. The driver of the truck blew himself up in the explosion.