Tuesday marked the deadline for American troops to pull out of Iraq’s towns and cities — a long-anticipated date that has been met 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 and 45 wounded Tuesday in a bombing in northern Iraq, a local police official said.

The blast took place in a busy commercial area in a predominantly Kurdish part of Kirkuk, destroying 20 shops and houses, the official said. Kirkuk is about 235 miles north of Baghdad.

To mark the the U.S. 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 U.S. 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 in Washington.

But Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and other Iraqi and U.S. officials had warned of an increase in attacks around the withdrawal date as insurgents attempt to re-ignite 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 U.S. 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.

In the past 10 days, a series of spectacular attacks — including bombings that have targeted civilians — have killed more than 200 Iraqis.

In addition to Tuesday’s deadly blast in Kirkuk, a car bombing Monday in Mosul killed at least nine Iraqi police officers. Iraqi Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi, a Sunni, urged people to avoid crowded public gatherings unless necessary.

But the top U.S. general in Iraq insisted Tuesday that much of the country was 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,” Odierno said.

U.S. 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.”

(Source: CNN)