Baghdad, Iraq ? Eight-year-old Sayef Rahim had a habit of hanging around the U.S. soldiers in his neighborhood. Like many Iraqi children, he enjoyed looking at the big strangers with their heavy uniforms, helmets, and fierce-looking guns. Sometimes he would get too close and be shooed away. Sometimes he might be lucky and get a small treat.

On Wednesday, Sayef was hanging around again. This time, he paid with his life. Someone threw a grenade at a U.S. Army vehicle that was parked to provide security for people using a bank on a quiet, sun-beaten street.

Sayef, who was standing under a palm tree a few feet from the dirt embankment where the grenade fell, was flung into the air by the blast and came down with a gaping wound in his chest, witnesses said.

After the attack, anger in the Al Mansour neighborhood focused on the person who had thrown the grenade from a passing car, the one who didn’t wait to see that he had killed an innocent child and injured seven Iraqi adults, including some bank guards. One U.S. soldier was hurt.

The attack was similar to the many hit-and-run operations that have made life dangerous for U.S. troops in occupied Iraq. But in a number of instances, Iraqi bystanders have been killed, and that has generated anger and signs of a backlash against the assailants.

“These saboteurs, these criminals, try to spoil everything. They want to exploit the situation,” said Najib Mohammed, whose home was damaged by the grenade. “They say they want to bring back Saddam, but how can you resuscitate a corpse?”

As of Wednesday, 33 Americans had died from hostile fire in Iraq since President Bush declared an end to major combat May 1. The latest U.S. fatality came Wednesday morning, when a soldier was killed on a highway west of Baghdad in a grenade attack on his convoy.

U.S. soldiers try to save a seriously wounded comrade after an attack in Baghdad. An Iraqi man threw a grenade at the patrolling U.S. vehicle Wednesday, seriously injuring the U.S. soldier and killing an Iraqi child.

In other incidents, a mayor and his son were assassinated in the western town of Hadithah, apparently because of pro-U.S. sympathies. And a U.S. military spokesman confirmed a report in Arabic media that a surface-to-air missile was fired at a C-130 transport plane near Baghdad International Airport but missed its target.

Wednesday’s attacks came on the eve of an important holiday under Saddam Hussein’s regime, marking the 1968 coup that established Iraq as a one-party Baathist state. U.S. occupation forces had been warned of a possible upsurge in assaults by Saddam loyalists.

“A curse upon the people making these attacks,” said Sayef’s grandmother Hasiba Debagh, crying and striking her chest in grief as she waited to learn whether Sayef had died. No one had yet told her, but she already feared the worst. “God should not spare them,” she said of the attackers. “The Americans are doing their best.”

“Just look at this mess,” said Jawad Hamed, whose son, Qusai Jawad, was among the injured. “Of course it is them — those people,” he said, referring to loyalists of the old regime.

“Iraqis are just furious because a lot of Iraqis are being hurt,” said a bank guard, Motes Mohsen. “Iraqis are hurt more than the Americans.”

The attack on the mayor of Hadithah, about 150 miles northwest of Baghdad, appeared to be another incident of intimidation against officials who work closely with the U.S.-led occupation authorities. Mohammed Nayil Jurayfi and one of his sons were killed when the mayor’s car was shot up by unknown assailants, according to news service reports.

A U.S. soldier walks away from a damaged U.S. heavy trailer truck following an attack on a military convoy near Baghdad, Iraq. One soldier was killed and two others injured Wednesday in another attack in the capital.