Bombs kill 5 in separate Baghdad attacks

Five people were killed when two bombs struck separate Shiite targets in Baghdad on Tuesday, a day after a double car bombing tore through the stalls of a market crowded with Shiites elsewhere in the capital leaving 88 dead _ the bloodiest attack in two months.

The military announced the deaths of two more U.S. troops, including a Marine who died Sunday from fighting south of Baghdad, raising the weekend death toll to 28 as American casualties mount ahead of a U.S.-Iraqi security push to try and secure Baghdad.

An American soldier also was killed Monday in the volatile Anbar province west of the capital, the military said.

The first blast Tuesday occurred when a parked car bomb exploded at 9 a.m. near the Finance Ministry, which is run by Bayan Jabr, a Shiite and former interior minister. One civilian was killed and four other people were wounded, including a ministry guard, police said.

A bomb planted under a car exploded about 45 minutes later in the predominantly Shiite commercial district of Karradah in downtown Baghdad, killing four people, including a woman and a 7-year-old boy, and wounding seven other people, police said.

The blast collapsed part of the wall of a brick building, leaving a ground floor apartment exposed and a mass of rubble and mangled cars in the alley.

"Why are the insurgents detonating bombs near our houses every day? Everyday we have a blast, what have we done wrong? May Allah curse everybody who hurts the people," an unidentified elderly woman shrouded in black said as she stood amid the wreckage.

The attacks have battered Shiites during one of their holiest festivals and were the latest in a renewed campaign of Sunni insurgent violence before a U.S.-Iraqi push to secure Baghdad. The first of the 21,000 extra U.S. troops being sent to help quell the violence have started to arrive in Baghdad.

Separately, the U.N. refugee agency said Tuesday that men allegedly wearing uniforms of the Iraqi security forces abducted a group of 17 Palestinian refugees from a building rented by the agency in Baghdad.

"UNHCR is very concerned and is seeking information on the Palestinians' whereabouts from Iraqi authorities," the agency's spokesman Ron Redmond told reporters in Geneva, Switzerland.

Some of the Palestinians were released later on Tuesday, he said. But Redmond was unable to say how many and how they were released.

Redmond said around 15,000 Palestinians lived in Baghdad as refugees, but faced constant threats and were unable to move freely.

In all, 137 people were killed or found dead across Iraq on Monday.

An al-Qaida-linked coalition of Iraqi Sunni insurgents also claimed its fighters shot down an American military helicopter in a Saturday crash that killed 12 U.S. soldiers. The U.S. military has said the cause of the crash has not been determined.

In Washington, a senior military official said investigators found debris near the scene of the helicopter crash that could be part of a shoulder-fired weapon. The official requested anonymity because the investigation is ongoing.

Monday's twin bombing in Baghdad was the single deadliest attack against civilians in Iraq since Nov. 23, when suspected al-Qaida in Iraq fighters attacked the capital's Sadr City Shiite slum with a series of car bombs and mortars that struck in quick succession, killing at least 215 people.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite, denounced the Monday attack and blamed Sunnis. "The alliance of the terrorists and the remnants of Saddam have committed an ugly crime," he said in a statement.

Deputy Health Minister Hakim al-Zamili said at least 78 people were killed and 156 were wounded, but police and hospital officials put the death toll at 88.

The attacks occurred even as Shiites mark the 10-day festival leading up to Ashoura, which marks the death of Imam Hussein, grandson of the Prophet Muhammad and one of the most revered Shiite saints.

Imam Hussein died in the battle of Karbala in A.D. 680. The battle cemented a schism in Islam between Shiites and Sunnis, a division that has grown in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. The festival culminates next week with processions and ceremonies, including self flagellation, in a show of grief to mark Hussein's death in battle.

In other violence police reported Tuesday:

_ Police pulled a bullet-riddled body that showed signs of torture from the Tigris River in Suwayrah, 25 miles south of Baghdad.

_ Gunmen shot to death an Iraqi contractor in the predominantly Shiite town of Musayyib, 40 miles south of Baghdad.

_ A roadside bomb struck a police patrol in Mosul, killing one policemen and wounding two. Gunmen also clashed with Iraqi police elsewhere in the northern city, leaving three police dead. Three insurgents also were killed and two arrested, police said.