BAGHDAD, Oct 2, 2008 (AFP) - Iraqi policeman Ali Abdul Hussein should have been celebrating the end of Ramadan. Instead, he wept outside a Baghdad mosque for his buddies killed by a suicide bombing on Thursday that he tried to stop.

Abdul Hussein, 33, sobbed at the entrance to the Shiite mosque of Al-Rasool in southern Baghdad's middle-class Jadida area where the morning Ramadan festivities were shattered by a suicide bomber wearing an explosives belt.

'I saw a man rushing to the checkpoint just outside the mosque,' Abdul Hussein told AFP. 'I noticed his belt and shouted to my colleagues to stop the man. I also ran towards him but two colleagues ahead of me stopped the man.'

Just then, the bomber detonated the explosives, killing the two policemen and sending Abdul Hussein flying. He was wounded in the leg, but returned to the mosque after taking the victims to hospital.

'I had to remove my uniform because it was covered in blood,' he said. 'If my two friends had not stopped the bomber outside, there would have been many more killed at the mosque.'

Fellow policeman Abu Ali said he and his colleagues had been in a cheerful mood after the end of the fasting month.

'We had blocked the road for cars, but the attacker had gone walking,' he said, manning a roadblock a few hundred yards (yards) from the mosque. The attacker slipped through another nearby checkpoint.

Witnesses said hundreds of worshippers had packed the mosque situated among commercial buildings and three-storey apartment blocks in the commercial and residential quarter.

Security officials said 12 people were killed and another 30 wounded in the Thursday morning attack.

Despite the bombing, the faithful still poured into the mosque later the same day as Shiite Muslims in the country celebrated Eid al-Fitr, the end of the fasting holy month.

Scriptures from the Koran holy book were being broadcast over a public address system as police cordoned off the entire area. Pedestrians were randomly searched for bombs and weapons.

Also on Thursday, a separate car bomb attack killed eight people, including four Iraqi soldiers, outside another Shiite mosque in the neighbouring Zafaraniyah quarter.

The twin bombings shattered the celebratory mood and caused massive traffic jams in the capital where motorists have to stop at numerous checkpoints manned by US and Iraqi forces.

Al-Rasool mosque's security chief, Mohammed Borhan, 29, pointed to the sidewalk where the suicide bomber's head landed. It was a few yards (meters) away from where the man detonated his explosives.

The triggering switch was blown also lay on the pavement. Beside the head was his right leg and a pile of flesh and intestines.

Borhan said he was puzzled why they were hit. 'I don't know why anyone wants to do something like to this mosque,' he said, adding that the attacker was not known to anyone in the neighbourhood.

Filming the remains of the bomber, Borhan said it was to help with identification. The footage shows the man's face almost perfectly intact with eyes wide open and a hint of bewilderment.

A palm-sized patch of blood was left on the dusty concrete floor where the head landed, facing the sky.

Slippers and shoes of those killed and wounded in the attack were scattered on the roadside. At the same spot, plainclothed security guards frisked other devotees entering the mosque to make sure there was no repeat blast.

'This Ramadan is quieter than in previous years in Baghdad,' said Borhan, who was inside the mosque when the blast went off. 'But our Eid (feast) has been ruined.'