Bombers kill 28 Shi’ites on eve of holy day

FOUR explosions ripped through Baghdad yesterday, killing at least 28 people and injuring dozens on the eve of Shi’ite Islam’s holiest festival.

It was the deadliest day since Iraq’s landmark elections last month.

Suicide bombers struck at two Shi’ite mosques as Friday prayers ended, another explosion occurred near a Shi’ite religious procession and a fourth attack, also carried out by a suicide bomber, blasted an Iraqi police and National Guard checkpoint in a Sunni neighbourhood.

The attacks recalled bombings on the Ashoura holiday a year ago that killed at least 181 during the religious festival.

In northern Iraq, meanwhile, three American soldiers were killed in separate attacks on Wednesday and Thursday, the US military said.

The bloodshed began when a bomber entered the vestibule of al-Khadimain mosque in the Iraqi capital’s Doura district as worshippers inside knelt in prayer before detonating his explosives.

Shortly afterward, a bomb exploded outside the al-Bayaa mosque in a predominantly Shi’ite neighbourhood in western Baghdad.

The first explosion killed 15 and the second killed 10, an official at Baghdad’s al-Yarmouk Hospital said. About 30 were wounded at both mosques.

Less than an hour later, an explosion near a procession of Shi’ites marking Ashoura north-west of the city centre killed two and injured five, according to police.

The fourth attack was at the checkpoint in northern Baghdad neighbourhood of al-Adamiyah. A reporter at the scene saw one dead police officer and two wounded civilians.

Shi’ites packed into mosques yesterday to mark the eve of Ashoura, the 10th day of the Islamic holy month of Muharram and the holiest day of the year for them.

The bombings were a bloody reminder of last year’s Ashoura commemorations, when twin blasts ripped through crowds of worshippers at Shi’ite Muslim shrines in Baghdad and Karbala and killed at least 181 people.

Ashoura marks the death of Imam Hussein, the grandson of the prophet Muhammad, in a seventh century battle for leadership of the Islamic world.

There were no immediate claims of responsibility. However, Iraqis blamed radical Sunni Muslim insurgents, who have staged car bombs, shootings and kidnappings to try to destabilise Iraq’s reconstruction and provoke a sectarian civil war between Shi’ites and Sunnis.

Walid Al-Hilly, a leading figure of the Shiite-led Dawa Party, said the attacks were designed to provoke civil war.