BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraqis began picking up copies of the draft constitution today that they will vote on next week, after the country's Shiite-led parliament ended a bitter dispute with Sunni legislators about how the referendum will be conducted.

Like other Iraqis, Lamia Dhyab picked up her copy at the small shop where she presents her ration card in south Baghdad each month to get government-subsidized food for her family.

"We are going to read the draft constitution. If we like it, we will vote yes. If we don't, we'll say no," said Dhyab, who was wearing a chador, the traditional head-to-toe black outfit that Muslim females often wear.

Under U.S. and U.N. pressure, parliament on Wednesday reversed its last-minute electoral law changes, which would have ensured passage of the new constitution in the Oct. 15 referendum, but which the United Nations called unfair.

Sunni Arab leaders who had threatened a boycott because of the changes said they were satisfied with Wednesday's reversal and are now mobilizing to defeat the charter at the polls. But some warned they could still call a boycott to protest major U.S. offensives launched over the past week in western Iraq, the Sunni heartland.

A suicide car bomb, meanwhile, hit a police patrol near the Oil Ministry today, killing nine Iraqis and wounding nine, police said. The bomb exploded about 400 yards from the ministry, said police Capt. Nabil Abdul Qadir. The dead included five policemen and four civilians.

A roadside bomb hit a U.S. Army patrol in Baghdad today, killing one soldier, the military said. The attack raised to at least 1,944, the number of U.S. military members who have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

A suicide car bomb also exploded today near a four-car convoy of foreign private security contractors in eastern Baghdad, killing three Iraqi bystanders, police said.

At least 271 people have been killed by insurgents in Iraq in the past 11 days.

On Wednesday, a bomb exploded at the entrance of a Shiite mosque in Hillah, a city south of Baghdad, killing at least 25 and wounding 93, as hundreds of worshippers gathered there for prayers at the start of the Islamic month of Ramadan and for the funeral of a man killed two days ago in a bomb blast at his restaurant.