BAGHDAD, Iraq – A suicide bomber killed seven people at an entrance to Baghdad’s Green Zone on Monday, striking on the one-year anniversary of the capture of Saddam Hussein with a bloody reminder of the insurgency’s endurance.

The morning rush hour blast occurred at a busy checkpoint leading to the fortified enclave where the U.S. Embassy and interim Iraqi government are located, sending a huge plume of thick black smoke spiraling over the Baghdad skyline.

Eyewitnesses said the suicide bomber’s car joined a queue of vehicles waiting to be checked at the western entrance to the zone, one normally used only by people who live or work there.

There were no American soldiers nearby, witnesses said, but Iraqi police were there, and they have been relentlessly targeted in recent weeks by insurgents intent on undermining efforts to rebuild Iraq’s security forces. However, as is the case with many of the insurgent attacks in Iraq, it appeared all the victims, including the 19 injuries, were civilians, according to officials at Baghdad’s Yarmuk hospital.

Among them was Saleh Hassan Sajet, 27, an itinerant laborer from the south who had just been hired to work on a construction project inside the zone. He was standing in a line of workers waiting to be allowed in when the bomber struck, igniting several cars and blasting shards of razor-sharp shrapnel into his face.

“What is the fault of these innocent people? What did I do wrong? I only wanted to work,” he wailed as he waited at the hospital to be treated.

In a posting on an Islamist Web site, the militant organization of the Jordanian-born militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi claimed responsibility.

“On this blessed day, one of the lions of the martyrdom-seeking brigade struck a gathering of apostates and Americans in the Green Zone,” read the posting, whose authenticity could not be confirmed.

The bombing came a little more than a week after two suicide bombers struck another entrance to the Green Zone, signaling the insurgency’s continued capacity to strike in the heart of the capital.

The attack Monday followed the deadliest day for U.S. forces in Iraq since the assault on rebel-held Fallujah ended last month. Seven Marines died Sunday in two separate incidents in the western province of al-Anbar, home to Fallujah as well as the restive town of Ramadi and several other insurgent strongholds.

The military refused to divulge details of how or where the Marines died, saying that letting insurgents know which of their tactics succeeded would help them plot other attacks.

In a sign that the problems in Fallujah are not over yet, U.S. warplanes pounded targets there for a second day Monday, according to a journalist with the Agence France Presse news agency who is embedded with Marines in the town. Clashes have persisted there, making the city unsafe for civilians to return and for workers to deliver aid.

There were other attacks around Baghdad and in the Sunni Triangle on Monday. A car bomb exploded at 8:30 a.m. in northern Baghdad, wounding three American soldiers and an Iraqi civilian, the military reported. Two Humvees were severely damaged in the attack, a statement said.

A mortar exploded near the Mansour Hotel in Baghdad, and another landed near the British Consulate in the normally quiet southern city of Basra, news agencies reported.

The Al-Jazeera television network reported clashes between insurgents and U.S. forces near Tikrit, the area where Saddam Hussein was captured a year ago, which raised hopes at the time that an end to the insurgency could be in sight.

Instead, the insurgency’s strength has grown, despite the absence of a visible or clearly identifiable leadership beyond the shadowy figure of al-Zarqawi, who is allied to al-Qaida and who makes his presence known through unverifiable statements on the Internet.

Increasingly, however, U.S. and Iraqi officials are convinced that the insurgency is being organized by former Baath Party officials who have co-opted Islamist extremist groups such as al-Zarqawi’s to aid their efforts to undermine the U.S. attempts to restore stability to Iraq.

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In an interview with the BBC on Monday, Iraqi interim President Ghazi al-Yawer blamed coalition forces for creating what he called a “security vacuum” in Iraq by disbanding Iraq’s army.

“We could have screened people out, instead of screening people in, and this could have saved us a lot of hassle and a lot of problems,” said al-Yawar, who has frequently criticized U.S. tactics in Iraq despite being appointed to his job by the outgoing American administration in June.

In an interview with a London-based newspaper Monday, al-Yawer also warned that assaults, such as the one in Fallujah, risk contributing to the rise of another dictator.

“If the situation in Iraq will continue like this, it will create within the Iraqi people feelings of bitterness, rage and humiliation which will provide … an appropriate environment for an Iraqi Hitler to appear, similar to the German Hitler who emerged after Germany’s defeat and the humiliation of the German people in World War I,” al-Yawer told the Asharq al-Awsat newspaper.

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