Deputy Minister Raad al-Harith was travelling in a convoy near Baghdad's Shia Sadr City district when gunmen in up to seven vehicles wearing military uniforms blocked their way and kidnapped them, police said.

The Electricity Ministry said it could not confirm the report, but an official said Harith had not arrived for work. Police said the abduction took place at 7.30 a.m. (0330 GMT).

It comes three days after gunmen kidnapped Sunni legislator Taiseer Najah al-Mashhadani and seven of her bodyguards in a northern district bordering Sadr City.

Sunni lawmakers have boycotted the last two sessions of parliament, refusing to return until she is released. Some Sunni leaders have blamed the kidnapping on Shia militias.

Meanwhile, the US military said yesterday it had killed an al-Qaeda operative suspected of orchestrating a massive truck bombing in a bustling Shiite market in Baghdad last week that left 66 people dead.

US forces carried out a raid Sunday near a village in the western province of Al-Anbar, the stronghold of the insurgency, in which a member of an al-Qaeda cell was killed and seven others arrested, it said.

"Coalition forces were targeting the al-Qaeda cell and we believe these people were from that cell who are responsible for the bombing on Saturday," US military spokesman Major William Wilhoite told AFP.

A huge truck bomb went off in a market in the Baghdad district of Sadr City on Saturday, killing 66 and wounding another 98 people. The area, a bastion of Shiite militiamen loyal to radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, is known for its anti-US fervour.

It was the second deadliest attack in the war-torn country this year, coming less than a month after the killing of al-Qaeda in Iraq chief Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in a US air strike on June 7.

The capital is hit almost daily by bomb attacks despite a massive security operation with tens of thousands of Iraqi and US troops patrolling the streets of Baghdad.

And on Tuesday, two police commandos were killed and three others wounded when a roadside bomb went off against their patrol in eastern Baghdad, while in the former rebel bastion of Fallujah gunmen stormed a mosque and shot dead Sunni cleric Sheikh Mohammed al-Jumaili.

The US military said it led a raid Sunday on the village of Mudaysis in Al-Anbar province against an al-Qaeda cell it said was known to "facilitate suicide bombing operations throughout the Euphrates River Valley."

"Intelligence led the troops to the known location of a terrorist who has been tied to senior leaders of a Syrian-based foreign terrorist network," a statement from the military said.