Truck Bomb Kills 9 Iraqis

BAGHDAD— A parked car bomb struck worshippers heading to a Shiite mosque Sunday in Baghdad, killing at least nine people as Iraqis celebrated a Muslim holiday. Authorities said 18 others died the day before when a suicide truck bomber followed by a swarm of gunmen attacked a regional police station.

Nobody claimed responsibility for the attacks, but they bore the hallmarks of al-Qaida in Iraq insurgents who had promised an offensive during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan to undermine U.S.-Iraqi claims of success in quelling the violence in the capital with an 8-month-old security operation.

The fasting month culminated this weekend with the three-day Eid al-Fitr festival that began on Friday for Sunnis and Saturday for Shiites.

After the bombing in Baghdad, police banned cars from the area surrounding the shrine in the Kazimiyah district in northwestern Baghdad until further notice, a police officer said.

Earlier Sunday, police found a parked booby-trapped minibus in the same area — home to Baghdad's holiest Shiite shrine — but were able to detonate it without casualties, added the officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to release the information.

In other violence in Iraq, an Iraqi soldier was killed Sunday and four others were wounded when a roadside bomb targeted their patrol in Khan Bani Saad, just northeast of Baghdad in the volatile Diyala province. Near the southern town of Hilla, a police officer was fatally shot by gunmen from a speeding car.