The bombing in Ramadi, 115 km west of the Iraqi capital, wounded 23, also mostly civilians in the line. It followed another attack in the southern city of Basra, where explosions tore through a market and killed 43 people, police and health officials said. Those blasts Saturday evening wounded about 185.

Police said the blast in Ramadi took place between a petrol station and an abandoned cinema in the city center. Of the eight killed, two were policemen, they said.

In other violence on Sunday, a car bomb exploded near a school and a cluster of stores in the former insurgent stronghold of Fallujah west of Baghdad, killing two people and injuring four.

The US military says an American soldier has been killed south of Baghdad. A Defense Department statement release on Sunday says the soldier died a day earlier in Babil province.

It was not clear whether the soldier died in a combat operation. The statement gave no additional details about the incident, saying only that it is under investigation.