Attacks Target Iraqi Soldiers and Police

On Thursday, a flurry of rocket and mortar attacks and at least one car bomb killed 31 people and wounded 135 in Karrada, according Iraq's national security adviser, Mowaffak al-Rubaie. On Monday, gunmen dressed in camouflage kidnapped at least 26 people from an Iraqi-American trade organization and a cellphone shop in Karrada.

At a meeting of the Baghdad Provisional Council on Tuesday, Rubaie called on residents to provide more information about the activities of insurgents. The day after the rocket attack on Karrada, he said, residents offered tips that led to the killing of four suspected insurgents, including two women, who he said were Sunnis loyal to former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein.

The attack "could have been avoided and those lives spared if the residents had provided the information in time to stop the terrorists," he said.

Also Tuesday, the U.S. military announced that a roadside bomb had exploded as a convoy passed south of Baghdad on Monday, killing one service member and wounding another. Another U.S. soldier died Tuesday during fighting in Anbar province. The military has not released the names of the service members.

Tuesday's violence also took the life of a correspondent for the Iranian television station al-Alaam, who was shot in the head and chest while sitting in his car in Baghdad's predominantly Sunni Amiriyah neighborhood, according to Capt. Walied Hassan of the Iraqi police. The insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq has posted Internet statements in the past threatening to punish the television station for perceived animosity toward Sunnis.

In southern Iraq, the governor of Najaf province said 45 people from his jurisdiction had been kidnapped on their way home from Syria. According to Gov. Asad Abu Gulal, a convoy of six sport-utility vehicles was hijacked as it passed near the insurgent hotbed of Ramadi. "We do not know what happened to them," he said. Gulal called on the Interior Ministry to establish a highway security force to guard against the kidnappings and killings that plague Iraqi travelers.

The radical Shiite cleric based in Najaf, Moqtada al-Sadr, on Tuesday urged his followers to turn out for a potentially violent gathering after this Friday's prayer services. Sadr, who controls the powerful Mahdi Army militia, said in a statement that he wants 1 million people to wear white shrouds, which signify martyrdom, and march on Baghdad in solidarity with insurgents and with Lebanese who face Israeli attacks.

"I know well what dangers surround demonstrations in our beloved Iraq, posed by those who are the enemies of God and Islam," Sadr said in his statement. "But our inevitable duty, and our love for martyrdom and death in the cause of God, is calling on us to support the righteousness and the people of righteousness."

Special correspondent Saad Sarhan in Najaf and other Washington Post staff in Baghdad contributed to this report.