Baghdad: Iraqis celebrated in the streets Tuesday, the deadline for US troops to pull out of Iraq's towns and cities -- a long-anticipated date marked by street festivals in Baghdad.
Celebrations were tempered, however, by fears of renewed violence as insurgents seek to use the date to stage new attacks.
At least 30 people, including women and children, were killed Tuesday in what security sources called a "huge bombing" in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk.
More than 100 also were wounded in the attack on a busy shopping area in a predominantly Kurdish part of Kirkuk, a disputed oil-rich city about 235 miles north of Baghdad. Rescuers are searching the rubble for people who might have been buried, a local police official said.
Hundreds have died in a series of dramatic attacks in the past 10 days after months of relative quiet.
The top US general in Iraq insisted shortly before the Kirkuk bombing that much of the country is safe.
"There is not widespread violence in Iraq," Gen. Ray Odierno told reporters in a videoconference from Baghdad.
"There's still gonna be bumps in the road. There's still gonna be violence here," he said.
US combat troops will remain in Iraq -- in bases and outposts outside of major population centers -- after Tuesday's pullback.
The 130,000 remaining US troops are tasked with supporting Iraqi troops and police and will require Iraqi permission to launch operations in the cities
Odierno said the cities would feel "significantly different" without US battalions, even though there will still be Americans there as military trainers and advisers.
Odierno testily refused to say how many there would be.
"I don't know," he said in response to a reporter's question. "It will be different every single day. I don't want to say a number. It will be inaccurate."
He later apologized, saying, "Sorry, I lost my temper a little bit on the numbers."
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To mark the US pullback, newscasters on state TV network Al-Iraqiya draped Iraqi flags around their necks as an on-screen clock counted down to midnight Monday (5 p.m. ET). Earlier Monday evening, hundreds of people danced and sang in a central Baghdad park.
"I feel the same way as any Iraqi feels -- I will feel my freedom and liberation when I don't see an American stopping an Iraqi on the street," said Awatef Jwad of Baghdad.
There were no columns of tanks rolling out of Baghdad or thousands of troops marching out of other cities as the deadline approached. The US military gradually has been pulling its combat forces out of Iraq's population centers for months, and they already were gone by the weekend, Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell told reporters.
But Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and other officials had warned of an increase in attacks around the withdrawal date as insurgents attempt to reignite the sectarian warfare that ravaged the country in 2006 and 2007.
While many Iraqis publicly said they are glad to see Americans out of their neighborhoods, some cited worries about what the future may hold without the US military nearby.
"Without the Americans, we were afraid of each other," said Hanaa Abdul Hassan of Baghdad.
"And now that the Americans are leaving, we will be more afraid. We knew the Americans were holding them back, so now I don't know what's going to happen," she said, without specifying who "they" were.
But US officials said they believe Iraq's police and army can keep a lid on the violence, which Morrell said was at the lowest point "in the history of this conflict."
Thomas Ricks, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security who has written extensively about Iraq, said he was not convinced Iraqi security could keep violence under control.
"No one knows whether the forces can handle it. It's a leap of faith we're taking here. My concern is we've taken this leap of faith before and it hasn't worked," Ricks said.
"The real thing for Iraqi security forces isn't whether they're trained or better equipped than the militias and the insurgents. The question is whether they're better motivated. The militias and insurgents knew what we were fighting for. The question has always been -- do Iraqi security forces know what they're fighting for?" he said.
Four US soldiers serving in Baghdad died Monday of combat-related injuries, the latest of more than 4,300 Americans to die there since the US-led invasion in 2003.
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A Web site associated with Saddam Hussein's deposed Baath Party posted a statement Tuesday attributed to the late dictator's former deputy, Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, calling the American pullout a "historic victory" for the insurgents.
"The 30th of June 2009 is your precious and glorious day that embodies your historic victories," the statement said. "For your enemy and the enemy of God decided to flee the battlefields dragging the tails of disappointment and defeat to protect its fleeing soldiers in a few and limited fortified bases, where they think they will find safety from your heroic charges and Godly strikes."
Al-Douri, the highest-ranking member of Hussein's government to remain at large, is believed to be a top figure in the insurgency. His urged Iraqis to keep fighting Americans "wherever they may be in Iraq."
US troops rolled into Baghdad in April 2003, less than three weeks after launching the invasion that toppled Hussein. President Bush said the invasion was necessary because Hussein's government was concealing nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs and could have provided those weapons to terrorists.
After the invasion, US inspectors found that Iraq had dismantled its weapons programs under UN sanctions in 1990s. But the Americans soon found themselves facing an insurgency from several quarters, including ex-members of the Baath Party, a Shiite Muslim militia led by anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and Sunni jihadists loyal to al Qaeda in Iraq.
By mid-2006, the conflict had become a low-level civil war, marked by the dumping of bodies in the streets on a daily basis. The conflict began to subside in late 2007 after Washington committed extra troops and supported a turn against the jihadists by Sunni Arab tribal leaders.
Under an agreement signed in the waning days of the Bush administration, all US forces will be out of Iraq by the end of 2011. Most will be gone by August 2010 under the withdrawal plan laid out by President Obama.
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