45 killed in Shrine bomb blasts

Up to 45 people were believed killed after a series of coordinated explosions struck major Shiite Muslim shrines in the Iraqi city of Karbala and in Baghdad today as thousands of pilgrims converged for the final day of a major religious festival.

Arab television stations reported 25 dead in Karbala.

More than 20 people may have been killed in the Baghdad blasts, witnesses said. Stunned witnesses believed the attacks were carried out by suicide bombers.

US intelligence officials have long been concerned about the possibility of militant attack on the Ashoura festival, and coalition and Iraqi forces bolstered security around Karbala and other Shiite-majority towns in the south during the pilgrimage.

In what was believed to be an unconnected attack, an American soldier was killed in Baghdad today after insurgents tossed a grenade at an Army Humvee driving along a road, the military said.

Another soldier was injured and taken to a military hospital where he was listed in serious condition. The military said it did not believe the attack was related to the shrine bombings.

In Karbala, 50 miles south of Baghdad, five blasts went off shortly after 10 am near two of the most important Shiite Islam shrines, hurling bodies in all directions and sending crowds of pilgrims fleeing in panic.

Three explosions rocked the inside and outside of the Kazimiya shrine in Baghdad at about the same time.

Police sealed off the area while panicked people fled screaming and ambulances raced to the scene. Dozens of armed men in civilian clothes tried to maintain order.

Some witnesses at Kazimiya said the blasts were carried out by suicide bombers. The Kazimiya shrine in northern Baghdad contains the tombs of two other Shiite saints, Imam Mousa Kazem and his grandson Imam Muhammad al-Jawad.

In Karbala, witnesses saw 10 bodies being loaded on to wooden carts and taken away. Many others were injured. Bodies ripped apart by the force of the blasts lay on the streets.

The Ashoura festival, which marks the 7th century killing of Imam Hussein, is the most important religious period in Shiite Islam and draws hundreds of thousands of pilgrims from Iraq, Iran, Pakistan and other Shiite communities to the Iraqi shrines.

The Karbala blasts struck near the golden-domed shrine where Imam Hussein is buried, in a neighbourhood of several pilgrimage sites. After the blasts, Shiite militiamen tried to clear the terrified crowds, firing guns into the air. Two more blasts went off about a half-hour later.

Two armed Iraqi policemen broke down in tears as they walked through the bomb site.

Iraqi militia initially tried to control the crowd and arrested two men the crowd attempted to lynch. Rumours swirled throughout the city as to the cause of the blasts, ranging from mortars fired from outside the town to suicide bombers in the crowd.

One witness said a bomb was hidden near the mosque.

“Many Iranians were killed, I was 10 metres away, it was hidden under rubbish,” one witness, identifying himself only as Sairouz, said.

Loudspeakers from the mosques continued to broadcast recitations from the Quran, only briefly interrupting the Ashoura commemoration to ask the crowd to part so that ambulances could move through the crowd. The mosques were not damaged by the blasts.

The Kazimiya blasts went off inside the shrine’s ornately tiled walls and outside in a square packed with street vendors catering to pilgrims. The street outside Kazimiya was littered with thousands of shoes and sandals belonging to worshippers who had been praying inside the shrine.

Hundreds of gunmen swarmed inside and outside the walled shrine as men wept. A US helicopter hovered over the shrine.

“How is it possible that any man let alone a Muslim man does this on the day of al-Hussein,” said Thaer al-Shimri, a member of the Shiite Al-Dawa party. “Today war has been launched on Islam.”