BAGHDAD, March 31: Two car bombs killed at least 10 Iraqis near shrines on Thursday as Shias marked Arbaeen _ end of a 40-day period after the Karbala tragedy. And television networks showed a US citizen and three Romanian journalists being held hostage. The latest attacks were carried out as politicians remained locked in efforts to break a deadlock over the formation of a new government two months after the Jan 30 election.

Seven people were killed by a car bomb in the centre of the restive northern city of Samarra. It exploded as a US-Iraqi patrol drove past the golden-domed shrine where two of the 12 imams _ Ali al Hadi and Hassan al Askari _ are believed to be buried. Four of the dead were civilians.

The bombing coincided with an armed attack on a police station adjacent to the shrine, added police.

Hours before, a suicide bomber blew himself up near an Iraqi army checkpoint in a busy residential neighbourhood of Tuz Khurmatu, a town on the road between Baghdad and the northern city of Kirkuk, police said.

Among the three people he killed was a five-year-old child. Another 16 people were wounded, half of them soldiers.

That attack took place as hundreds of Turkmen Shias walked to the shrine of Ahmed ibn Musa al Kadhim, the son of another imam. The region around Kirkuk, a melting pot of Kurds, Turkmen and Arabs, is a frequent flashpoint of ethnic strife. The US military said on Thursday that one of its soldiers was killed in a small arms attack the previous day in Baghdad.

—AFP