People stand on the site of a roadside bomb attack in eastern Baghdad, on Thursday. The bomb, one of two attacks, killed 10 people and injured 24 as worshippers were leaving the Rasoul Mosque. People stand on the site of a roadside bomb attack in eastern Baghdad, on Thursday. The bomb, one of two attacks, killed 10 people and injured 24 as worshippers were leaving the Rasoul Mosque. (Hadi Mizban/Associated Press)Bomb blasts near two Shia mosques in Baghdad on Thursday morning killed 24 people at the end of morning prayers, Iraqi police said.

The separate explosions occurred as worshippers were leaving a mosque in the Shia neighbourhood of Zafaraniyah and another in eastern Baghdad, police said.

Muslims were marking the end of Ramadan on Thursday and celebrating Eid al-Fitr.

In a third, unrelated attack, gunmen fatally shot six Sunnis as they travelled in a minibus in the mainly Shiite town of Wajihiyah, 100 kilometres north of Baghdad. The dead, including three women and two children, were on a road trip to visit relatives.

In the Zafaraniyah explosion, a suicide car bomber driving a white Mercedes sedan apparently targeted an Iraqi army patrol protecting the worshippers, police said.

Fourteen people, three of whom were soldiers, were killed and 28 were injured.

Ammar Hashim, 25, who runs a car parts shop nearby, said he rushed to the site and saw "a damaged and burned Humvee with dead and burned bodies and many injured people crying out in pain."

Jalil Ibrahim, 18, is helped by a medic in a hospital in Baghdad, after being wounded in a blast targeting Shiite worshipers leaving a mosque. Jalil Ibrahim, 18, is helped by a medic in a hospital in Baghdad, after being wounded in a blast targeting Shiite worshipers leaving a mosque. (Adil al-Khazali/Associated Press)Hashim said civilian cars began to rush people to a nearby hospital before ambulances arrived.

In the second blast, worshippers were leaving the Rasoul Mosque in eastern Baghdad when a suicide bomber who appeared to be in his teens detonated an explosives belt, police said. The bombing killed 10 people and injured 24.

No group has claimed responsibility for the bombs.

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

U.S. troops wounded

Separately Thursday, a bomb in western Baghdad wounded four American soldiers, U.S. military spokesman Lt.-Col. Steven Stover told the Associated Press. No other details were provided, but Baghdad police said the attacker was a suicide bomber in a car who detonated his explosives near a U.S. convoy.

Two Iraqi civilians were also wounded, a police official said.

With files from the Associated Press