Suicide bombers kill 60 in attacks on holy cities
In Baghdad, dozens of gunmen carried out a brazen ambush on a car, killing three employees of the organisation running next month’s elections.
The bombings came just over an hour apart - first a suicide blast that ripped through minibuses at the entrance of the main bus station in the city of Karbala, then a car bomb in a central square of Najaf crowded with people watching a funeral procession attended by the city police chief and provincial governor.
The violence was the latest in an insurgent campaign to disrupt the crucial January 30 elections, the first national polls since the fall of Saddam Hussein - and they were the latest attacks to target Shi’ite Muslims, the majority community in Iraq and the most likely to dominate the vote.
The car bomb in Najaf detonated in central Maidan Square where a large crowd of people had gathered for the funeral procession of a tribal sheikh - about 100 yards from where Governor Adnan al-Zurufi and police chief Ghalib al-Jazaari were standing.
Youssef Munim, head of the statistics department at Najaf’s al-Hakim Hospital, said 47 people were killed by the explosion and 69 were wounded.
The nearby al-Zahraa Hospital received another two people killed by the bombing, plus 21 suffering from various injuries, according to nurse Mohanad Abdul Redha.
Al-Jazaari believed he and al-Zurufi were the targets of the attack, in which he said three explosives went off at about 2:45pm. Both were unhurt. “As I and the governor were waiting for the funeral processions three explosions occurred,” Al-Jazaari said. “We were targeted.”
Residents were pulling bodies of the dead from damaged shops at the square, which is about 400 yards from the Imam Ali Shrine, the holiest Shiite site in Iraq.
The bombing in Karbala, about 45 miles northwest of Najaf, destroyed about 10 passenger minibuses and set fire to five cars outside the crowded bus station.
Firefighters tried to put out the blazes as ambulances ferried burned and bleeding casualties to the nearby al-Hussein hospital.
Ali al-Ardawi, assistant for the hospital’s director, said 13 people were killed in the attack and 30 injured.
It was the second bombing in Karbala in a week.
Last Wednesday, a bomb went off at the city’s gold-domed Imam Hussein Shrine, killing eight people and wounding 40 in an apparent attempt to kill a top aide to Iraq’s most powerful Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.
The shrine, located near the bus station, was hit by a March 2 suicide bombing that killed 85 people and wounded 100.
The holy sites in Najaf and Karbala, south of Baghdad, house the tombs of Shia Islam’s most revered saints. Insurgents also carried out a new attack on election officials, with a daylight assault on Baghdad’s central Haifa Street, the scene of repeated clashes between security forces and insurgents.
About 30 militants hurling hand grenades and firing machine guns attacked a car carrying five people employed by the commission’s Baghdad office and tried “to drag them out,” said Adel al-Lami, a member of the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq.
Three employees, including a security guard, were killed, while two escaped unhurt, he said. A police official said four people were killed and the ferocity of the clashes prevented police from nearing the area.
Also, insurgents claiming to represent three Iraqi militant groups issued a videotape showing what they said were 10 abducted Iraqis who had been working for an American company.
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