NINE U.S. soldiers died in two separate incidents north of Baghdad, the military said yesterday.

Six soldiers were killed when a bomb exploded near their vehicles during a combat operation Monday in Salahuddin province, the military said in a statement.

Three other soldiers were wounded and transported to an American military hospital for treatment, it said.

In another incident the same day, three more soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb in Diyala province. One soldier was wounded.

All nine were assigned to Task Force Lightning. Names were withheld pending family notification.

Also yesterday, Shiite pilgrims came under attack again, police said, with at least eight killed as they streamed south from Baghdad on foot toward a shrine ahead of a Muslim holiday this weekend.

Worshippers were heading to Karbala, 80 kilometers south of the Iraqi capital, before the holiday that marks the end of a 40-day mourning period after the death of the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson.

On Monday a suicide car bomber turned a venerable book market into a deadly inferno and gunmen targeted Shiite pilgrims as suspected Sunni insurgents brought major bloodshed back into the lap of their main Shiite rivals. At least 105 people died in the blast and seven pilgrims were killed.

The violence — after a relative three-day lull in Baghdad — was seen as another salvo in the Sunni extremist campaign to provoke a sectarian civil war that could tear apart the Shiite-led government and erase Washington’s plans for Iraq. (SD-Agencies)