2 attacks kill 4 in Iraq on holiday

baghdad -- The recent upswing in violence in Iraq subsided Friday as Sunni Muslims observed Eid al-Fitr, the holiday that celebrates the end of the fasting month of Ramadan, though four people were killed and dozens injured in two bomb attacks.

In the first attack, a bomb planted amid toys in a horse-drawn cart killed two people and injured 20, most of them children, in the northern mostly Shiite Muslim town of Tuz Khurmatu, police Capt. Abbas Mohammed said. A suicide bomber drove the cart to a makeshift carnival where children were marking the holiday.

Later in the day, a car bomb exploded in the Tahrir Square area of central Baghdad, near a clothes bazaar. The bomb targeted a police installation, killing two officers and injuring four. Also wounded were shoppers and merchants who were out amid newly relaxed curfew restrictions for Friday prayer days.

Eid begins when religious clerics concur that a new crescent moon has been spotted, initiating three days of celebrations to end the fast. Sunni religious leaders concluded that the new moon appeared Thursday night. Shiite religious leaders have not yet made that determination.

Elsewhere in the capital, police found the bodies of four people shot to death.

South of Baghdad, in Hillah, police said U.S. forces led a raid on a mosque that resulted in the arrests of 13 Mahdi Army members, and a firefight wounded one member of the Shiite militia, who later died at a hospital.

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christian.berthelsen@latimes.com

Times staff writers Said Rifai and Raheem Salman in Baghdad, and special correspondents in Baghdad and Kirkuk contributed to this report.