IRAQ: Popular celebrations for the annual Shia festival of Ashura, banned under Saddam Hussein, were marred by bomb and gun attacks yesterday that killed at least 36 Shia faithful and wounded more than 90.
A mortar barrage later struck a Sunni neighbourhood in Baghdad, killing at least 17 people and injuring 72.
Security was tight in the holy city of Kerbala, south of Baghdad, where hundreds of thousands of pilgrims converged from across Iraq, Iran and other countries to mark the death 1,300 years ago of Hussein, grandson of the prophet Muhammad. It is the holiest day in the Shia calendar.
However the bombers chose to attack apparently softer targets in two mainly Kurdish Shia towns northeast of the capital near the border with Iran.
The town of Baladruz had the heaviest death toll, when a suicide bomber blew himself up among worshippers as they entered a Shia mosque, killing 19 people and wounding 54.
A roadside bomb had also hit a procession of Shia Kurds in the border town of Khanekin about 50 miles to the north outside a bank on the main street.
At least 13 people were killed and 39 were wounded by a device hidden in a rubbish bin, a police captain said.
No group had claimed responsibility for the attack, but he blamed Sunni extremists, saying they had recently destroyed two Shia shrines in the area. "There are a lot of terrorism organisations around working in the name of Islam," said Capt Ashraf Qassim Miran. "This is simply a terrorist act and inhumane on this holy day."
In a Shia district in Baghdad, gunmen attacked a minibus carrying pilgrims to Kerbala, killing four people.
Along the main road in Kerbala, well-drilled columns of men dressed in funereal black marched towards the shrine of Imam Ali (Hussein's father), rhythmically flaying themselves with chains.
The ritual is a symbol of the suffering of Hussein, who was killed at the battle of Kerbala in the 7th century by the Sunni caliph Yazid.
"I have come to express my readiness to suffer like the Imam Hussein," said Ali Bakr (23), a student who had walked from Baghdad. "He was martyred a long time ago, but today there are still dark forces targeting the Shia in Iraq."
Iraqi authorities had deployed 11,000 police and soldiers in Kerbala amid fears of an attack similar to one two years ago, when multiple suicide bombers struck worshippers in Kerbala and Baghdad, killing 171 people.
Ashura has been a target in the past for radical Sunni militants who view the Shia community - a majority in Iraq but a minority in the Islamic world - as heretics.
The fears were fuelled by the discovery of what Iraqi officials said was a plot by a messianic Muslim cult to target senior Shia clerics in the holy city of Najaf south of Baghdad at the climax of Ashura this week.
Iraqi forces backed by US tanks and warplanes fought a day-long battle with the so-called "Soldiers of Heaven" near Najaf on Sunday. Officials said the cult's leader was killed. Iraqi defence ministry spokesman Mohammed al-Askari said yesterday that the final toll from the battle was 263 killed. A total of 502 "Soldiers of Heaven" followers had been arrested, including 210 wounded.
Television footage shot on Monday showed dozens of bodies lying in what appeared to be a dry irrigation canal that the fighters had used as a trench in their camp hidden in orchards outside Najaf.
The bodies of several women and children could also be seen.
Dozens of bullet casings and an empty AK-47 assault rifle magazine lay near one man's body.
An army officer in the 8th Iraqi division said his forces had found 1,000 copies of a book about the movement and its leader entitled The Judge of Heaven, and thousands of copies of a pamphlet entitled The Holy Coming.