"It was a huge explosion," said Mohammed Hamid, who works in a bakery in the area. "We carried many of the injured to ambulances and helped remove the bodies."

Police Lt. Col. Falah al-Mohammedawi said 19 people were killed and 58 wounded. Many of the injured were rushed to nearby Imam Ali Hospital, where hallways were filled with doctors and nurses treating and bandaging the wounded.

Sadr City is the stronghold of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who operates a powerful militia, one of many that exist in the capital outside the control of the government. Al-Maliki hopes to disband such militias and integrate them into the country's military and police forces as a way of reducing violence.

On Saturday, a suicide car bomber killed at least five people and injured 10 in an attack on a police station in the western border town of Qaim, the head of the local hospital said.

Elsewhere, police also found the bodies of 19 people who apparently had been kidnapped and tortured, four in Baghdad and 15 in Musayyib, about 40 miles south of the capital. It was unclear when the victims in Musayyib had been killed and brought to a morgue, which prepared to bury them on Saturday, police said.

However, all 19 bodies appeared to be victims of death squads that kidnap and kill hundreds of people in Iraq, to settle personal vendettas, because of sectarian hatred, or in an effort to win ransoms.

Meanwhile, Iraqis waited to see who would be in their new government and how effective it would be at reducing violence and solving many other problems in the country, including frequent power outages in homes and businesses.

On Friday, al-Maliki said he would temporarily fill two posts in the new cabinet, the defense and the interior ministries, because of disputes over the portfolios.

Minority Sunni Arabs want the Defense Ministry, which runs the army; the majority Shiites want the Interior Ministry, which controls the police.

In the interim, deputy parliament speaker Khalid al-Attiyah told The Associated Press, al-Maliki will serve as interior minister and Salam Zikam Ali al-Zubaie, a Sunni Arab, will head the Defense Ministry. He said they would serve for a week to allow for an agreement on permanent appointments.

Al-Zubaie is the Sunni nominee for deputy premier, and his political group is part of the main Sunni Arab coalition, the Iraqi Accordance Front.

The Cabinet list, its members or its number, were not made public ahead of time. It remained unclear what would happen if any nominee is rejected, though it was unlikely al-Maliki would risk presenting a deal lawmakers would not approve.

Al-Maliki did not say when the interior and defense ministers would be chosen but did say the posts would go to people "well known as independents, honest, not loyal to any militia or the equivalent."

Meanwhile, the second-highest ranking U.S. general in Iraq said the key to reducing violence in Iraq was to ensure that the government can revive the economy.

"I honestly believe that as this government begins work on the policies that will be required to put people to work and make use of the vast resources of Iraq that you're going to see a decrease in violence," Lt. Gen. Peter Chiarelli, commander of Multinational Corps Iraq, told reporters in Washington.