A suicide bomber struck outside a bank as elderly men and women waited to cash their pension checks Tuesday, killing 23 people and wounding nearly 100 in this oil-rich northern city that has become a flashpoint for sectarian tension. Elsewhere, five Iraqi soldiers were killed and two wounded in a suicide car bombing at a checkpoint in Kan'an, 30 miles north of Baghdad, and the bodies of 24 men - victims of recent insurgent ambushes in the west of the country - were transported to a hospital in the capital. Also Tuesday, an American soldier and Marine were killed - the soldier when a roadside bomb hit his convoy in southern Baghdad and the Marine in combat operations near Fallujah, the military said. Two other soldiers assigned to a Marine unit died in a roadside bombing Monday in Ramadi, 60 miles west of the capital, according to a report of The Associated Press.
