9 killed in Iraq as Shiite leader calls on citizens to help security forces

(AP) Nine people were killed in Iraq on Wednesday in a relative lull in violence, a day after alarming bloodshed left more than 70 people dead in bombings and shootings.

A prominent Shiite leader, meanwhile, called for setting up of resident committees in city neighborhoods to help security forces curb the almost daily cycle of violence in the country, which has been blamed largely on a sectarian rift between Shiites and Sunnis.

"The security forces ... should strike with fists of iron and they should be tough with those who are shedding the blood of the Iraqis," said Abdel-Aziz al-Hakim in a speech.

"You (the people) are the nucleus and the pioneers for these popular committees that will defend Iraq, its religion, its dignity and its people," said al-Hakim, the head of the dominant Shiite alliance in Parliament.

Early Wednesday, a bomb in a garbage bag lying on a street in downtown Baghdad exploded near a group of laborers waiting to be hired for daily wage work, said police 1st Lt. Ahmed Mohammed Ali.

He said three laborers were killed and eight were injured. Minutes later a second bomb, also hidden in a bag, exploded but caused no casualties, he said.

In other violence Wednesday, two traffic police colonels were killed and two guards wounded in a drive-by shooting in Khalis, 50 miles north of Baghdad. A police patrol was hit by a roadside bomb in the northern city of Mosul, killing one policeman and injuring four, police said.

A man was also killed when a bomb he was planting on a highway in northern Baghdad exploded, police said. Two unidentified bodies, showing signs of torture and gunshot wounds to the head, were found in northwestern Baghdad.

On Tuesday, a roadside bomb destroyed a bus packed with Iraqi soldiers near Beiji, 155 miles north of Baghdad. All 24 people aboard were killed. Fourteen people also died and 37 were wounded when a car bomb exploded at a bank in Baghdad where police and soldiers were picking up paychecks.

The recent surge in violence is being seen as a greater threat to the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki than the anti-U.S. Sunni insurgency, which erupted after the fall of Saddam Hussein in March 2003.

The U.S. military is moving at least 3,700 soldiers from Mosul to Baghdad for a new security operation to wrest control of the capital from Shiite militias, Sunni insurgents, kidnapping gangs, rogue police and freelance gunmen.

U.S. officials have described the Baghdad campaign as a "must-win" for al-Maliki, whose government has struggled to curb the rise in violence since it took office May 20. American troops will work alongside U.S.-trained Iraqi forces.

As part of the campaign against militias, U.S. troops on Tuesday arrested a Baghdad-area representative of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, whose Mahdi Army is among the most feared armed groups.

___

Associated Press correspondents Sameer Yacoub, Qais al-Bashir, Robert H. Reid and Bushra Juhi contributed to this report.