U.S. Soldier, 18 Others Slain in Iraq Violence

A roadside bomb killed a U.S. soldier and wounded another in northern Iraq, the U.S. military said Saturday.

The soldiers with the 101st Sustainment Brigade were hit Friday while conducting a combat logistics patrol west of Kirkuk, 180 miles north of Baghdad, the military said in a statement. The names of the soldiers were not released.

Two separate bombings Saturday in downtown Baghdad killed at least 10 people and wounded at least 45, Iraqi police said. The attacks came after the government lifted a daytime traffic ban it had imposed Friday amid fears of reprisals for the killing of Abu Musab Zarqawi, who led the group Al Qaeda in Iraq.

In the first attack, a roadside bomb targeting a police patrol exploded in an outdoor market, killing four people and wounding 27, police said.

Civilians bore the brunt of the explosion, which missed the police patrol in the Sadriya market, police Lts. Ali Mitaab and Thaer Mahmoud said. The market is in a mixed Shiite and Sunni Arab neighborhood in central Baghdad. “A bomb was left in a plastic bag here, and many people were wounded, including a child,” said a boy standing near the blast site.

A few hours later, a car bomb in another mixed area killed six people and wounded 18, including three police officers.

Gunmen in two cars killed a Shiite metalworker and wounded two others in their shop in west Baghdad, police Capt. Jamil Hussein said.

A mortar round landed on a house elsewhere in the capital, seriously wounding a 50-year-old woman and a 2-year-old girl, Lt. Maitham Abdul Razzaq said.

A gunfight between Iraqi soldiers and militants in the northern city of Mosul, 225 miles northwest of Baghdad, killed two people, including a Syrian truck driver caught in the crossfire, police spokesman Abdul-Hamid Jubouri said.

Police said gunmen in two cars killed at least three Shiite butchers in neighboring shops near a central bus station in Mosul.

In volatile Diyala province, where Zarqawi was killed, police said they found the severed heads of two Sunni brothers in the small town of Khan Bani Saad, a week after they were kidnapped.