Car Bomb Hits Kirkuk Market

BAGHDAD, Aug. 10 -- A car bomb tore through a produce market in the northern city of Kirkuk on Friday morning, police said, killing at least 11 people and wounding 45 others.

The attack occurred in al-Hurriya, a Kurdish neighborhood in the southern part of the oil-rich city, as women shopped at the outdoor market. Several nearby homes and shops were destroyed, Kirkuk police Col. Pestton Mahmoud said.

Kirkuk has seen rising tensions among the city's Kurdish, Arab and Turkmen ethnic groups, which all have significant populations in the area. More than 85 people were killed by a truck bomb in Kirkuk on July 17.

Northern Iraq's semiautonomous Kurdish region is seeking to bring the city under its control, a move opposed by many Arabs and neighboring Turkey, which claims to represent the interests of the Turkmen minority. An Iraqi referendum on Kirkuk's status is scheduled for later this year.

Overall, the level of violence across Iraq was low on Thursday and Friday, in large part because of a three-day vehicle curfew in Baghdad that was intended to protect Shiite pilgrims traveling to a shrine in the Kadhimiyah neighborhood. Two people were reported killed during this year's holiday, in contrast to 2005, when nearly 1,000 people were killed after a stampede broke out among worshipers because of rumors of a suicide bomber.

The U.S. military announced Thursday that two American troops had been killed this week. A Marine died in combat Tuesday in Anbar province, and a soldier died Wednesday as a result of "non-hostile" causes.

Meanwhile, the Iraqi army said that Mwafaq Yassin, a senior leader of the Sunni insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq, had been killed near Mosul on Friday. The army called Yassin the "right-hand man" to al-Qaeda in Iraq chief Abu Ayyub al-Masri, the pseudonym of an insurgent who the U.S. government says is an Egyptian with deep ties to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda group.

Also Friday, Col. John Castles, commander of the 82nd Airborne Division's 2nd Brigade Combat Team, told reporters that Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr had gone to Iran.

Sadr leads the powerful Mahdi Army militia and commands the loyalty of 30 members of Iraq's parliament. Amid controversy over Iranian influence in Iraqi affairs, U.S. officials said earlier this year that Sadr spent several months in Iran, which his aides denied.

Castles, in a videoconference with Pentagon reporters, said the information on Sadr's whereabouts was based on U.S. intelligence reports, the Associated Press reported.

Ahmed al-Shaibani, a spokesman for Moqtada al-Sadr, denied that the cleric had left the country. "Moqtada al-Sadr is still in Iraq and is in Najaf among his followers and the people who love him," Shaibani said. "These are rumors and lies by the occupation forces."

Najaf residents said they believed Sadr had left the country because the usual stream of visitors into his compound had stopped recently and there have been fewer guards outside than usual.

Special correspondents Saad al-Izzi in Baghdad and Saad Sarhan in Najaf and other Washington Post staff in Iraq contributed to this report.