Youth and Sports Minister Jassem Jaafar hosted politicians and dignitaries at a party for the team at a luxury hotel inside Baghdad's Green Zone, the often-shelled city district that houses the Iraqi government and US embassy.

Guests cheered to the beat of folk music, waved giant Iraqi flags and congratulated the squad on last Sunday's victory that has been celebrated as a rare moment of national solidarity by most of Iraq's war-weary population.

But as with homecoming festivities on Friday, ordinary Iraqis were kept at bay. Instead government officials, members of the Iraqi Olympic Committee, football officials and lawmakers were prominent among the crowd.

President Jalal Talabani expressed hope that the victory would encourage politicians to unite against the disunity that saw the largest Sunni bloc withdraw from the Shiite-dominated government on Wednesday.

"This victory will help to patch up and strengthen alliances between groups on the basis of national reconciliation," he told a news conference with Defence Minister Abdel Qader Jassim Mohammed.

But the deadly violence that has exacerbated political distrust among the country's rival sectarian parties continued.

A roadside bomb blew up next to an Iraqi military patrol, killing one civilian and wounding five others, four of them soldiers, in Bab al-Muaadam, northern Baghdad, security officials said.

In Kirkuk, gunmen shot dead police Lieutenant Colonel Ismail Salam Khalaf as he was leaving home to go to the office, said police Colonel Adel Zain al-Abaddein.

Khalaf worked at the internal affairs directorate, which investigates wanted insurgents and police corruption in the ethnically mixed oil hub which Kurds want to join the Kurdish Regional Government in northern Iraq.

In Baghdad, an Iraqi Football Federation official told AFP that most of the cup-winning team would head back to Jordan on Saturday.

"Those leaving today will use the same plane as yesterday," said Tariq Ahmed referring to the chartered plane that brought the team from Jordan on Friday.

Five of the 22-man national side are to remain in the country, two of whom have contracts with a club in the northern city of Arbil, in Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region, Ahmed said.

"Some of the players will return to Amman for various reasons. Some have contracts in Jordan, or in Syria, or elsewhere. The others, who don't have contracts or external commitments, will remain in Iraq," said Ahmed.

Around a third of the players did not return to Baghdad even for Friday's official festivities held under thick security in the Green Zone, including captain Yunis Mahmoud who scored Sunday's winning goal.

Mahmoud, a Sunni Arab, had said he feared death if he returned to Baghdad. Owing to the danger in Iraq, the national squad trains in Jordan and many team members play their club football abroad.