Another car bomb went off in the northern oil-rich city of Kirkuk, causing at least two deaths, while five people were killed in Baghdad when a bomb apparently intended for a police vehicle struck civilians traveling in a car.
The death toll of more than 30 Iraqis and Americans occurred against the backdrop of Iraqis across the country marking the end of the Islamic month of fasting and prayer.
Today is being observed as the start of the post-Ramadan Eid al-Fitr festival by Sunni Muslims; for most Shiites the three-day feast, normally one of the year's most joyous occasions, starts Friday.
Pentagon officials were not confirming that the AH-1W Super Cobra that crashed near the town of Ramadi was downed by enemy fire.
However, an Iraqi cited by Associated Press Television News in the vicinity said he saw the helicopter brought down by insurgents.
The crash at 8:15 a.m. killed two Marines of the 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing, a Marine statement said. Further details were withheld pending notification of relatives, and the military said the crash was being investigated.
In other fighting around Ramadi, a hub of the Sunni Arab-led insurgency in the restive Al Anbar province, a Marine and a U.S. Navy sailor were killed late Tuesday by a roadside bomb, the military reported.
In Balad, 50 miles north of Baghdad, a patrol came under fire with small arms Wednesday, mortally wounding a soldier and injuring another.
The military said that troops responded to the attack, killing one insurgent who had thrown a grenade, and a U.S. jet bombarded a nearby building, killing another insurgent shooting from inside.
A sixth American died south of Baghdad on Wednesday when a roadside bomb struck his patrol, raising to more than 2,030 the number of U.S. military personnel killed since the conflict began in March 2003.
According to a source at the Iraqi Ministry of Information, the Musayyib car bomb came when a Korean-built minibus exploded in the busy main market of the commercial town on the Euphrates River, near Hillah.
Musayyib is about 40 miles south of Baghdad in the ''triangle of death,'' an area that marks a frontier between the predominantly Sunni Arab in western Iraq and the mainly Shiite areas south of the capital.
