BAGHDAD -- A suicide attacker killed at least 36 people and wounded 50 more in a Shi'ite funeral procession yesterday north of Baghdad, while a car bomb near a market outside the capital killed 13 and wounded 21, police said.
The US military also said five soldiers were killed yesterday and five were wounded in roadside bombings in northern Iraq. The soldiers were assigned to the 101st Airborne Division and were on patrol near Beiji, 155 miles north of Baghdad, the statement said.
A day earlier, a soldier from the 101st Airborne whose vehicle was rammed by a car Thursday near Beiji died of his injuries at a German hospital, the military said.
The funeral was attacked at sunset while dozens of people were offering condolences to Raad Majid, the head of the municipal council in Abu Saida, for the death of his uncle, police officials said. Abu Saida is near Baqubah, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad.
The suicide attacker drove his car into the gathering and detonated the bomb, the command center said. Ambulances and police rushed from Baqubah, as well as other nearby towns, to help in the rescue operations.
Late yesterday, the provincial police command reported that 36 people were dead and 50 were injured in the attack.
The market explosion occurred earlier near the Diyala Bridge area southeast of Baghdad as dozens of people shopped, police Colonel Nouri Ashour said. The dead included five women.
Iraqi police and US soldiers surrounded a house in Mosul, 225 miles northwest of Baghdad.
They had received reports that members of Al Qaeda in Iraq were inside, said a police spokesman Brigadier Said Ahmed al-Jubouri.
Almost immediately, a fierce firefight broke out, and three insurgents detonated explosives and killed themselves. Five more died fighting, while four police officers also were killed, he said.
Yesterday's bombings occurred a day after two bombers went into the Sheik Murad mosque and the Grand Mosque in the border town of Khanaqin during noon prayers and detonated explosives strapped to their bodies, survivors said.
Reported death tolls ranged from 76, a figure provided by Kurdish officials, to at least 100, a number released by police.
Hospital officials said Friday that 74 people had been killed and more than 100 had been wounded in the largely Kurdish town, which is about 90 miles northeast of Baghdad.
Such suicide attacks frequently are attributed to Al Qaeda in Iraq, a fundamentalist Sunni Islamic group. The group's leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, has advocated attacks in the past against Shi'ites, whom he considers apostates.
