BAGHDAD — A roadside bomb killed a U.S. soldier in Baghdad’s Shiite slum of Sadr City on Sunday while an Iraqi died when a bicycle-riding suicide bomber blew himself up amid a mass rally against Israel’s airstrikes on Gaza.
The two attacks were demonstrations of the violence that still flares up in Iraq as the government prepares to take responsibility for security from the U.S. military in a few days.
A spokesman for the U.S. military, Army Capt. Charles Calio, said the soldier was killed by a roadside bomb that targeted an American convoy. He said there were no other casualties and that the name of the soldier was being withheld pending notification of family.
In Mosul, 16 people in the crowd of about 1,300 protesters were wounded in the attack in the city center, a police officer said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak with news media.
U.S. and Iraqi forces continue to battle al-Qaeda and other insurgents in Mosul, Iraq’s third-largest city, where economic and political problems persist. The issues are complicated by Kurdish-Arab tensions in the city.
There has been no claim of responsibility for the attack on the Mosul demonstration, the local police officer said. The rally was one of several throughout Iraq on Sunday to protest the Israeli attacks and demand a strong response from Arab governments.
The demonstration was organized by the Sunni Iraqi Islamic Party. The party’s Mosul spokesman, Yahiya Abid Mahjoub, complained that police and the Iraqi army had not taken security precautions for the demonstration.
Also Sunday, police in Fallujah said a bomb exploded on the outskirts of the city, killing two civilians and wounding four others.
A police officer said the bomb exploded in a parking lot where farmers and other merchants gather to buy and sell goods.
Also Sunday, Iraq’s presidency council signed off on a resolution, making legal a parliamentary resolution allowing thousands of British and other non-U.S. troops to stay past New Year’s Eve. The approval comes days before the expiration Wednesday of a U.N. resolution that gave troops legal authority to operate in Iraq.
The law allows about 4,000 British troops and smaller contingents from Australia, El Salvador, Estonia and Romania to remain until the end of July.
