( AP ) - A suicide bomber drove through a checkpoint and blew up his car in Baghdad's Shiite district of Sadr City, killing at least 12 people in an attack apparently aimed at a nearby market, police and hospital officials said.
Iraqi police fired at the attacker after he refused to stop at the checkpoint, but he managed to detonate the explosives, officials said. Thirty-five people were wounded and many cars and shops were destroyed.
AP Television News video footage of the aftermath showed the burned out and twisted wreckage of three cars - the attack vehicle and two others beside it, one flipped onto its roof - across the street from a police station. Pools of water from fire hoses were stained with blood.
Meanwhile, a small Sunni Arab bloc ended its parliamentary boycott Saturday, returning to the legislature as it considers key benchmark legislation demanded by Washington amid increasing pressure to end the political deadlock.
The return of the Iraqi National Dialogue Front ends the last boycott of parliament, which had contributed to the political paralysis.
The party returned in part because parliament granted its demand that Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki be summoned for questioning by lawmakers about the security situation in Iraq.
"We need a liberal government, we need a secular government. Without such a government the violence will continue," party head Saleh al-Mutlaq said from Jordan on Al-Jazeera television.
Al-Mutlaq said he considered a recent decrease in violence a "temporary improvement."
"The violence will grow again, as people will lose hope if nothing changes on the political side," he said. "There was a big failure on the political side ... without reconciliation the violence will not stop."
Elsewhere, the U.S. military said it had brought a new weapon into the fight in Iraq, announcing the Army's first-ever use of a drone aircraft to kill enemy fighters in the country.
The Hunter unmanned aerial vehicle, or UAV, dropped a precision bomb on two suspected insurgents believed to be preparing to plant roadside bombs on Sept. 1, the military said. The drone was called in for the attack near Qarraya, 180 miles northwest of Baghdad, after a scout team from the 2nd Battalion, 25th Aviation Regiment, observed the insurgents at work.