9 killed by female suicide bomber

BAGHDAD — A female suicide bomber struck black-clad worshippers preparing for Shiite Islam's holiest day, killing at least nine Wednesday near a marketplace in Diyala province — a region of farmland and palm groves northeast of Baghdad that is home to strategic havens for extremists.

Northwest of Diyala, meanwhile, small-arms fire killed three U.S. soldiers conducting operations Wednesday in Salahuddin province, the military said. Two other soldiers were wounded.

As of Wednesday, at least 3,926 members of the U.S. military have died in the Iraq war, according to an Associated Press count.

Diyala remains one of Iraq's most violent regions and is a main battleground for U.S. and Iraqi troops trying to overwhelm al-Qaida strongholds in the capital and elsewhere around the country.

The suicide bomb attack in Khan Bani Saad, a Shiite village nine miles south of Baqouba, was the fourth such attack by a woman in Iraq in three months. All have taken place in Diyala.

U.S. officials say this indicates the extremists are running short of male volunteers. However, it also could be that al-Qaida in Iraq believes women are less likely to be searched and that explosives are easier to conceal under women's clothing.

In Wednesday's attack, the woman blew herself up about 50 yards from a mosque as Shiite men made preparations for a ceremony marking Ashoura, the holiest day in the Shiite religious calendar, according to residents and police.

Police and hospital officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were afraid of being attacked, said nine people were killed and six wounded. The U.S. military said seven died and 15 were wounded.

Sunni Arab extremists have repeatedly targeted Ashoura processions, with hundreds killed by mortar shelling or car bombings since 2003. As a precaution, authorities announced a 48-hour ban on the use of vehicles in Baghdad and nine provinces south of the capital starting today at dusk.

Ashoura, which comes later this week, commemorates the death in a seventh-century battle of Imam Hussein, one of Shiite Islam's most revered saints. His tomb is in Karbala, 60 miles south of Baghdad.

The terrain in Diyala is far trickier for fighting insurgents and preventing attacks than the western desert of Anbar, from which U.S. forces and Sunni tribes ousted al-Qaida last year. Unable to fire at distant targets, the military, instead, must sometimes raid homes — some of which are booby-trapped.

There have been two such attacks in Diyala since the current military campaign was launched. Six U.S. soldiers were killed and four were wounded Jan. 9, the second day of the operation. And on Monday, an explosion killed a police officer and two members of the local Awakening Council, a Sunni Arab group that switched sides to join U.S. forces against al-Qaida in Iraq.

Diyala has defied the trend toward lower violence over the past six months in Baghdad and much of central Iraq, largely because it became the new base for rebels pushed out of Baghdad and Anbar province.

In Baghdad, there were hints of new threats after several months of relative quiet. Fighters believed allied with Iran have resumed mortar and rocket attacks, with several big blasts heard shortly after dawn Wednesday as well as a few more later in the morning.

On Tuesday night, at least five mortars crashed into the Green Zone, site of the U.S. Embassy and Iraqi government, not long after visiting Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice held a news conference.

Mortar and rocket attacks on the Green Zone virtually stopped about mid-October. The quiet followed a six-month cease-fire announced in August by radical Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army militia, though some breakaway factions of al-Sadr's group continued attacks.

Two Mahdi Army commanders have told The Associated Press the attacks are being carried out by a new group tied to Iran, which is thought to have stopped backing al-Sadr.

The group — called Etalaat, which means "information" or "intelligence" in Farsi — was formerly the Iranian Revolutionary Guard's liaison to the Mahdi Army and its rogue factions, the commanders said.