Most bodies were bound and shot in the head and many bore signs of torture - trademarks of sectarian death squads and kidnap gangs plaguing the capital.
Adding to the toll a bomb in a parked car in central Baghdad killed 14 people and wounded 67 others during the morning rush-hour. The blast occurred near Iraq's national sports stadium.
Later, another car bomb apparently targeting police protecting an electricity distribution plant killed eight people and wounded 19 in the Zayouna neighbourhood in eastern Baghdad.
In another attack, insurgents lobbed three mortar bombs at Al-Rashaad police station in Baghdad's eastern Jadida neighbourhood. The attack killed one policeman and wounded two others.
Another three mortars were fired at central Baghdad's old Al-Muthanna airport which left four civilians wounded.
100 a day
The United Nations estimated two months ago that about 100 people a day were being killed in Iraq in sectarian bloodshed between the country's majority Shi'ite Muslims and minority Sunni Arabs.
US military commanders have said the increased presence of troops on the streets, sweeping through violent neighbourhoods to prepare them for Iraqi police control, had reduced the "murder rate" by more than 40 per cent in August.
That figure covered individual shootings but not bigger attacks such as bombings.
Last week, the UN office in Baghdad said the number of unidentified bodies taken to the city morgue in August fell by 17 percent to 1,536 from a record figure in July.
Morgue officials, who have stopped giving data to the media, say about 90 percent of the bodies they see are victims of violence. More than one in four Iraqis live in Baghdad.
Sectarian killings in the capital have created waves of refugees, fleeing homes in neighbourhoods where they feel in a minority and hardening a divide along the Tigris river between mainly Sunni west Baghdad and the mainly Shi'ite east.
Iraq's four-month-old coalition government is pursuing a "national reconciliation plan" to try to avert an all-out civil war.