Car bombs killed at least 24 people in Iraq Sunday and police found the bullet-riddled bodies of 42 men in Baghdad.

In the deadliest blast, at least 15 people were killed in the southern Shi'ite holy city of Karbala. 

In Baghdad, a car bomb near an army patrol in a Sunni neighborhood (Adhamiyah) killed eight people and wounded 15.  At nearly the same time, another blast (in the Waziriyah neighborhood) killed one person.  And a U.S. Marine died from wounds sustained during an operation in al-Anbar province.

To the north, Kurdistan's parliament formally unified the autonomous region's two local governments. 

In southern Iraq, Basra was reported calm and an overnight curfew was lifted after Saturday's clash between Shi'ite gunmen and British troops who were trying to recover a downed British military helicopter.