BAGHDAD — Bombings on Shiite neighborhoods in Baghdad and a blast on an Iranian pilgrim bus killed more than 30 people on Saturday, marring Iraqi celebrations of the second day of the Islamic Eid al Adha religious festival.

Violence in Iraq has eased sharply, but Sunni Islamist insurgents and al-Qaida's Iraq wing often target Shiites in an attempt to stir up the kind of sectarian tensions that dragged the country close to civil war in 2006-2007.

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Two car bombs exploded on Saturday, one ripping into a restaurant in the Shiite stronghold of Sadr City and killing at least 23 people, police and hospital sources said.

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"I was just selling fruit and we were surprised by a huge explosion on the other side of the street," Hassan Falih Shami, a grocery stall owner near the site of the blast. "You can see pools of blood, the shoes and pieces of clothing."

Hours earlier, a roadside bomb planted near an open-air market killed seven people, including three children at a playground. Another blast killed six people when it hit a bus carrying Iranian pilgrims to a Baghdad shrine, police and hospital officials said.

Police said the attack on the Iranian pilgrims came from a bomb that had been attached to their bus. It exploded around 300 yards from a police checkpoint, sending the bus out of control before it flipped over on its side.

Insurgents have carried out at least one major attack a month since the last U.S. troops left in December. Iraqi officials worry Syria's crisis is bolstering Iraqi insurgents.

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The monthly death toll from attacks in Iraq doubled in September to 365, the highest number of casualties in two years, including a series of bombings targeting Shiite neighborhoods that killed more than 100 people.

Security officials had said they believe insurgents would try to carry out a large attack during the religious holiday, which started on Friday.

Car bombs exploded and mortars landed around the Shiite neighborhood of Shula, northwestern Baghdad, on Tuesday killing eight people and wounding 28, and another person was killed by a mortar round in Kadhimiya area.

Reporting by Raheem Salman; Writing by Patrick Markey

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A powerful car bomb exploded in Damascus on Friday, inflicting many casualties and buffeting a shaky temporary truce in the Syrian conflict on the occasion of a Muslim religious holiday.

State television said the "terrorist car bomb" had killed five people and wounded 32, according to "preliminary figures."

Opposition activists said the bomb had gone off near a makeshift children's playground built for the Eid al-Adha holiday in the southern Daf al-Shok district of the capital.

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Fighting erupted around Syria earlier as both sides violated the Eid al-Adha cease-fire arranged by international peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, but violence was far less intense than usual.

The Syrian military said it had responded to attacks by insurgents on army positions, in line with its announcement  Thursday that would cease military activity during the four-day holiday but would react to rebel actions.

Brahimi's cease-fire appeal had won widespread international support, including from Russia, China and Iran, President Bashar al-Assad's main foreign allies.

Syrian military agrees to Eid cease-fire; residents report shelling

The U.N.-Arab League envoy had hoped to build on the truce to calm a 19-month-old conflict that has killed an estimated 32,000 people and worsened instability in the Middle East.

Violence appeared to wane in some areas, but truce breaches by both sides swiftly marred Syrians' hopes for a peaceful celebration of Eid al-Adha, the climax of the hajj pilgrimage to Mecca.

"We are not celebrating Eid here," said a woman in a besieged Syrian town near the Turkish border, speaking above the noise of incessant gunfire and shelling. "No one is in the mood to celebrate. Everyone is just glad they are alive."

Her husband, a portly, bearded man in his 50s, said they and their five children had just returned to the town after nine days camped out on a farm with other families to escape clashes.

"We have no gifts for our children. We can't even make phone calls to our families," he said, a young daughter on his lap.

'Painful disaster'
The Syrian conflict has aggravated divisions in the Islamic world, with Shiite Iran supporting Assad and U.S.-allied Sunni nations such as Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar backing his foes.

The imam of Mecca's Grand Mosque called on Arabs and Muslims to take "practical and urgent" steps to stop bloodshed in Syria.

Syrian opposition skeptical of 'feeble' ceasefire plan

"The world should bear responsibility for this prolonged and painful disaster (in Syria) and the responsibility is greater for the Arabs and Muslims who should call on each other to support the oppressed against the oppressor," Sheikh Saleh Mohammed al-Taleb told worshipers during Eid prayers.

For some in Syria, there was no respite from war, but by dusk the death toll was still significantly lower than in recent days, when often between 150 to 200 people have been killed, according to reports that cannot be independently verified.

Assad himself, who has vowed to defeat what he says are Islamist fighters backed by Syria's enemies abroad, was shown on state television attending Eid prayers at a Damascus mosque.

The prime minister, information minister and foreign minister, as well as the mufti, Syria's top Muslim official, were filmed praying alongside the 47-year-old president.

Assad, smiling and apparently relaxed, shook hands and exchanged Eid greetings with other worshipers afterward.

Military stalemate
Protests against Assad burst out in March last year, inspired by Arab uprisings elsewhere, but repression by security forces led to an armed insurgency, plunging Syria into a civil war that neither side has proved able to win or seems willing to end.

A commander from the rebel Free Syrian Army had said his fighters would honor the cease-fire but demanded Assad meet opposition demands for the release of thousands of detainees.

Some Islamist militants, including the Nusra Front, rejected the truce. Many groups were skeptical that it would hold.

"We do not care about this truce. We are cautious. If the tanks are still there and the checkpoints are still there then what is the truce?" asked Abu Moaz, spokesman for Ansar al-Islam, a group whose units fight in and around Damascus.

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Damascus residents reported artillery barrages by Syrian troops on Thursday, hours before the scheduled start of a cease-fire to mark the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha, according to Reuters.

Residents said the shelling by troops stationed on a mountain overlooking the Syrian capital targeted Hajar al-Aswad, a poor neighborhood inhabited by refugees from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. There were no immediate reports of casualties.

"Consecutive artillery volleys from Qasioun shook my home," said Omar, an engineer who lives in al-Muhajereen district on a foothill of the mountain.

A Free Syrian Army commander had earlier given qualified backing to the truce, proposed by U.N.-Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, but he demanded that President Bashar al-Assad free detainees. An Islamist group said it was not committed to the truce, due to start on Friday, but may halt operations if the army did.

Brahimi proposed the temporary truce to stem, however briefly, the bloodshed in a conflict that began as popular protests in March last year and has escalated into a civil war that activists say has killed more than 32,000 people.

Syria agrees to cease-fire during Eid holiday, says mediator

The fighting pits mainly Sunni Muslim rebels against Assad, from the Alawite faith which is linked to Shiite Islam, and threatens to draw in regional Sunni Muslim and Shiite powers and engulf the whole Middle East, Brahimi has warned.

"On the occasion of the blessed Eid al-Adha, the general command of the army and armed forces announces a halt to military operations on the territory of the Syrian Arab Republic, from Friday morning ... until Monday," an army statement read on state television said.

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It reserved the right to respond if "the armed terrorist groups open fire on civilians and government forces, attack public and private properties, or use car bombs and explosives."

It would also respond to any reinforcement or re-supplying of rebel units, or smuggling of fighters from neighboring countries "in violation of their international commitments to combat terrorism."

Qassem Saadeddine, head of the military council in Homs province and spokesman for the FSA joint command, said his fighters were committed to the truce but demanded the release of opposition prisoners on Friday.

Syrian opposition skeptical of 'feeble' ceasefire plan

Abu Moaz, spokesman for Ansar al-Islam, said the Islamist group doubted Assad's forces would observe the truce, though it might suspend operations if they did.

"We do not care about this truce. We are cautious. If the tanks are still there and the checkpoints are still there then what is the truce?" he said of the organization, which includes several brigades fighting in the capital and Damascus province.

Brahimi's predecessor, former U.N. chief Kofi Annan, declared a cease-fire in Syria on April 12, but it soon became a dead letter, along with the rest of his six-point peace plan.

Report: At least 20 killed in Aleppo as rebels battle Syria army

Violence has intensified since then, with daily death tolls compiled by opposition monitoring groups often exceeding 200.

The U.S. State Department said it hopes the opposition forces and the government in Syria will put down their weapons and abide by the call for a cease-fire.

"What we are hoping and expecting is that they will not just talk the talk of cease-fire, but that they will walk the walk, beginning with the regime and we will be watching very closely," spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said.  

Nuland called any day in Syria without violence progress and expressed hope that if the cease-fire is in place, there may be "space for more work to be done on a transition."

But Nuland also expressed skepticism, saying: "The Syrian regime in particular is good at making promises and less good at following through."

China urged all sides to respect a cease-fire, an idea also backed by Syria's main regional ally Iran.

Aid window
U.N. aid agencies have geared up to take advantage of any window of opportunity provided by a cease-fire to go to areas that have been difficult to reach due to fighting, a U.N. official in Geneva said.

"UN agencies have been preparing rapidly to scale up especially in areas that have been difficult to reach due to active conflict and which may become accessible as a result of these developments," he told Reuters.

The U.N. refugee agency UNHCR said that it had prepared emergency kits for distribution for up to 13,000 families - an estimated 65,000 people - in previously inaccessible areas including Homs and the northeastern city of Hassaka.

"We and our partners want to be in a position to move quickly if security allows over the next few days," UNHCR Syria Representative Tarik Kurdi in Damascus said in a statement.

The U.N. World Food Programme has identified 90,000 people in 21 hot spots from Aleppo to Homs and Latakia in need food parcels and will try to reach them through local agencies, the U.N. official said.

Ban Ki-moon, the U.N. secretary-general, welcomed the planned cease-fire, according to Al Jazeera.

"We would simply fervently hope that the guns do fall silent, that there is a suspension in the violence so that humanitarian workers can help those who are most in need," Ban's spokesman Martin Nesirky told reporters, according to Al Jazeera.

"The world is now watching," he added.

Reuters and NBC's Catherine Chomiak contributed to this report.

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Updated at 9:05 a.m. ET: Syria has agreed to a cease-fire during the short Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha, which begins Friday, international mediator Lakhdar Brahimi said Wednesday at a Cairo news conference.

Brahimi, appointed by the United Nations and Arab League, said some Syrian opposition groups he had been in contact with had also agreed to a truce in principle.

Brahimi did not elaborate on how such a truce would be monitored. Reporting from Syria is difficult and claims made by either side are almost impossible to verify.

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Eid al-Adha — the feast of the sacrifice — starts on Oct. 26 in the 2012 Gregorian calendar and lasts up to four days.

"After the visit I made to Damascus, there is agreement from the Syrian government for a cease-fire during the Eid,'' Brahimi told a news conference at the Cairo-based League.

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He did not give a precise time period for the cease-fire but said Damascus would announce its agreement on Wednesday or Thursday. Syria's foreign ministry said it was still studying the truce proposal.

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President Bashar Assad is fighting an insurgency that grew out of street protests 19 months ago and has escalated into a civil war in which 30,000 people have been killed.

His overstretched army has lost swathes of territory and relies on air power to keep rebels at bay.

Conditions?
It was also not immediately clear what conditions all parties would have to impose to make the cease-fire a success. Rebel forces do not speak with one voice and already one rebel commander has said he has conditions that must be met.

Nevertheless, Brahimi said there was broad agreement on the truce. 

"Other factions in Syria that we were able to contact, heads of fighting groups, most of them also agree on the principle of the ceasefire,'' he said.

"If this humble initiative succeeds, we hope that we can build on it in order to discuss a longer and more effective cease-fire and this has to be part of a comprehensive political process,'' Brahimi said.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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