Blast in Sunni district of Baghdad kills five, injures 16

The blast in Baghdad’s Azamiyah district also injured 16 civilians, an officer at the al-Risafa police station said. Officials at two hospitals that received the wounded said most of the injured were young men.

The police officer and hospital officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.

Baghdad’s northern Azamiyah district was a Sunni stronghold during sectarian violence in the Iraqi capital in 2006 and 2007. But as in other parts of the city, violence has eased considerably and residents have resumed going to sidewalk cafes and dining in riverside restaurants.

Attacks have not halted entirely, however, and militants still strike mosques, markets, and symbols of state authority with deadly force.

In August, two truck bombs were detonated at ministry buildings in Baghdad, killing more than 100 people and wounding hundreds. The attacks sharply undermined Iraqis’ confidence in Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s security policy ahead of parliamentary elections in January.

The summer’s deadly bombings in the capital also heightened fears about the abilities of Iraqi security forces to protect the people in the aftermath of US troops’ pullout from the country’s urban centers in June. The United States plans to fully withdraw from Iraq by the end of 2011.

Scattered violence has continued around the country. On Saturday, a suicide bomber driving a dynamite-laden truck destroyed a bridge near Ramadi and an attack on an Iraqi army convoy outside Fallujah killed four Iraqi soldiers. In Baghdad yesterday, a government employee was killed and three of his colleagues were injured when a bomb attached to their vehicle detonated near Baghdad University in the Karrada neighborhood, police said.

The recent violence is sure to be on the agenda when Maliki meets with US President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden next week. Maliki’s trip to the United States was designed to coincide with an investor conference that aims to drum up interest in Iraq’s fragile economy.

Because violence in Iraq is sharply down from its peak levels, the United States is preparing for the withdrawal of all combat forces by August 2010 and everyone else by 2012.

In the coming days and months, tens of thousands of soldiers will be moving from Iraq to Kuwait and finally to the United States for the long journey home.

The Army’s First Battalion, 18th Infantry Regiment, left Baghdad last month and returned to its home at Fort Riley, Kansas. The official end of the 12-month deployment came when the battalion’s colors were folded in a brief ceremony Sept. 22.

“About a year ago, I told you we will bleed together, we will sweat together, and sometimes we will cry together,’’ Lieutenant Colonel John Vermeesch, the battalion’s commander, told the soldiers standing in formation at Camp Victory. “In the end, the people of northwest Baghdad are better off.’’