Seven killed in Karbala mosque explosion

At least seven people were killed and 31 injured today when a bomb exploded at the gate to one of Shia Islam’s holiest shrines in Iraq, hospital officials said.

The bomb went off near the western gate of the Imam Hussein shrine in Karbala, said Dr Abdul-Abbas Al-Timimi, director of Al-Hussein hospital in the city.

Karbala, 50 miles south of Baghdad, was the scene of heavy fighting in April between the militia of anti-US cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and multinational forces.

At the time, the US military accused fighters loyal to the rebel cleric of firing on American forces from the mosque.

The injured included Sheik Abdul Mahdi al-Karbalayee, a representative of Iraq’s most influential Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.

Al-Sistani’s spokesman Hamed al-Khafaf said the blast was likely an assassination attempt on al-Karbalayee. He said that several bodyguards were among the dead and wounded.