Baghdad suicide car bomb blast toll rises to eight

A suicide car bomb exploded near a revered shrine in the holy Shiite city of Karbala today, killing eight people and wounding 36, police said, in an apparent attempt by Sunni Arab insurgents to cause another spike in Iraq’s sectarian violence.

The golden dome and minarets of the Al-Abbas shrine didn’t appear to be damaged in video footage shown on Iraqi state TV, but the powerful blast set many parked cars on fire in a nearby street, and two Iraqi men with bloody faces could be seen running through heavy black smoke past the body of another victim of the attack.

Meanwhile, the Association of Muslim Scholars and the country’s largest Sunni political party today condemned a deadly US military attack that had taken place in a Sunni-dominated area northwest of Baghdad.

The US command has said Friday’s raid and airstrike killed 20 insurgents, but the association and the Iraqi Islamic Party joined a village mayor who alleged that the attack killed civilians, including women and children.

Today about 1,000 residents of al-Ishaqi village in the volatile province of Salahuddin held a funeral for the 19 civilians they say were killed in the US attack, shouting slogans such as “Down with the occupiers”, “Long live the resistance” and “There is no God but Allah”.

Karbala, 50 miles south of Baghdad, is considered Iraq’s second holiest Shiite city after the nearby city of Najaf. Shiites make pilgrimages to both locations and bury their dead in large cemeteries there.

On Friday night, a mortar attack by suspected Sunni insurgents on a poor Shiite neighbourhood on the outskirts of Baghdad killed 25 people, police said.