BAGHDAD – At least 48 people were killed in Iraq yesterday in bombings targeting Shia pilgrims and police, a third day of bloodshed that posed a challenge to Iraqi security forces as US troops prepare to withdraw. Most of the dead were pilgrims pouring into the holy Shia city of Kerbala ahead of the culmination of a religious rite which is regularly attacked by Sunni Islamist al-Qaeda.
Two car bombs killed 45 people near Kerbala, 80km south of Baghdad, Mohammed al-Moussawi, head of the Kerbala provincial council, said. About 150 people were wounded in the two explosions on the outskirts of the city outside a security cordon of checkpoints set up to protect the pilgrims who walk for days from cities across Iraq and come from neighbouring countries, he added.
An official from the health ministry in Baghdad put the death toll at 50 and said 203 were wounded, while police and interior ministry sources in the capital said they had heard suicide bombers wearing explosive vests were involved.
Earlier, a suicide bomber drove a car into a police headquarters in volatile Diyala province, killing at least three people and wounding about 30, the latest in a series of attacks against the security forces that began on Tuesday.
About 65 people have died in the assaults on police, including 49 police recruits lining up to get jobs in Tikrit, the home town of former dictator Saddam Hussein, on Tuesday.
The bomber in Diyala blew up the car at the main gate of the police headquarters in the city of Baquba, 65km northeast of Baghdad.
Overall violence in Iraq has fallen sharply from the height of sectarian warfare in 2006-07, but Sunni Islamist insurgents, groups linked to Saddam’s outlawed Baath party and armed Shia militia, still stage lethal attacks.
Attacking Shia pilgrims also carries the political message that prime minister Nuri al-Maliki’s new Shia-led government, reappointed in December after a nine-month impasse after a March election, is incapable of protecting people.
About 120,000 police and troops have been mobilised to protect the hundreds of thousands of pilgrims making the religious trek to Kerbala for Arbain, which marks the end of 40 days of mourning for Imam Hussein, a grandson of the Prophet Mohammed. – (Reuters)