The speaker of the US House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, arrived in Baghdad on Friday to meet Iraqi and US officials, a US embassy official said.
The new Democrat speaker has helped lead opposition to US President George W. Bush’s plan to send 21,500 extra troops to Iraq to bolster a last-ditch security crackdown in Baghdad.
Friday’s blast in the capital hit the Ghazil market an hour before a weekly 11 a.m. (0800 GMT) vehicle curfew in the capital, aimed at protecting mosques over Friday noon prayers.
Bomb attacks killed at least 34 people in Baghdad on Thursday as Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki warned militants from both Shi’ite and Sunni camps they would have nowhere to hide from a coming major crackdown backed by US troops.
On Friday, a suicide bomber blew himself up in a Shi’ite mosque on the outskirts of Mosul, killing seven and wounding 17 more after prayers, a police source said.
After a surge in bombings over the past few days, security forces are on high alert as Shi’ites prepare to mark the climax of the 10-day mourning rite of Ashura on Monday.
Many hundreds of thousands of pilgrims are expected to converge on the holy city of Kerbala, south of Baghdad, for ceremonies banned during Saddam Hussein’s Sunni-dominated, secular rule and now an annual highpoint for majority Shi’ites in the political ascendant in Iraq for the first time.
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