Baghdad, Iraq ? Beset by rampant sectarian violence, Iraq’s parliament voted Wednesday to extend the country’s state of emergency for 30 more days, as at least 66 more Iraqis were killed or found dead.

Wednesday’s deaths included those of eight soccer players and fans cut down by a pair of mortar rounds that slammed onto a field in Baghdad’s Sadr City neighborhood.

The U.S. military, meanwhile, announced the deaths of a soldier and a Marine, raising the number of American forces killed this month in Iraq to 21 in the first eight days of November.

Since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, at least 2,839 members of the U.S. military have died as of Wednesday, according to an Associated Press count.

Lawmakers present for a closed-door meeting attended by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki voted unanimously to extend the emergency measures, said legislators Ammar Touama and Kamal al-Saidi.

The state of emergency has been renewed every month since it was first authorized in November 2004. It allows for a nighttime curfew and gives the government extra powers to make arrests without warrants and launch police and military operations.

The measures are implemented in all areas of the country apart from the autonomous Kurdish region in the north.

Under sunny skies, mortars struck the Sadr City playing field just after 4:30 p.m. during a game between young men from the sprawling Shiite slum that is home to about 2.5 million people, said a captain with the local police force, Mohammed Ismail.

Twenty others were wounded in the attack, which came after days of mortar barrages launched by rival Sunni and Shiite groups on residential areas that have killed dozens in the capital.

U.S. forces said they killed 14 suspected insurgents, detained 48, and rescued a kidnapped Iraqi policeman in a pair of raids Tuesday and Wednesday near Muqdadiyah, about 60 miles north of Baghdad, and Ramadi, 70 miles west of Baghdad.

Weapons, including sniper rifles and explosives-rigged vests worn by suicide bombers, were seized in the raids, along with materials for making the roadside bombs that account for a large proportion of U.S. deaths in the country, the military said.