Simultaneous explosions ripped through crowds of worshippers yesterday at Shiite Muslim shrines in Baghdad and the city of Karbala, killing at least 143 people on the holiest day of the Shiite calendar, a US official said. It was the bloodiest day since the end of major fighting.
Furious leaders of the country's 60 percent Shiite majority branded the attacks an attempt to ignite civil war.
The blasts, using a combination of suicide bombers and planted explosives, came during the Shiite festival of Ashura and coincided with a shooting attack on Shiite worshippers in Quetta, Pakistan, that killed at least 29 people and wounded more than 150.
Three suicide bombers set off their explosives in and around Baghdad's Kazimiya shrine, killing 58 and wounding 200, US Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt told reporters.
At least one suicide attacker blew himself up and pre-set explosives went off in Kerbala, killing 85 and wounding more than 100, he said.
A fourth suicide bomber whose explosives did not detonate was captured at Kazimiya, and four people were arrested in connection with the attack in Kerbala, Kimmitt told reporters in Baghdad.
Shiites had packed Kerbala and some districts of Baghdad to mark Ashura, the 10th day of the month of Muharram when, according to tradition, Imam Hussein, grandson of the Prophet Mohammed, was killed in battle more than 13 centuries ago.
During the ceremony -- banned under the Sunni Muslim Saddam -- Shiites beat their heads and chests and gash their heads with swords to show their grief and echo the suffering of Imam Hussein.
The attacks sparked a wave of Shiite outrage -- much of it directed at US troops in the Iraqi capital. US soldiers who arrived at Kazimiya were attacked by angry crowds throwing stones and garbage, injuring two Americans.
"This is the work of Jews and American occupation forces," a loudspeaker outside Kazimiya blared. Inside, cleric Hassan Toaima told an angry crowd, "We demand to know who did this so that we can avenge our martyrs."
US intelligence officials have long been concerned about the possibility of militant attacks during Ashura.
Last month, US officials released what they said was a letter by Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi outlining a strategy of spectacular attacks on Shiites, aimed at sparking a Sunni-Shiite civil war.
Iraq's Governing Council blamed the attacks on "terrorists" seeking to inflame sectarian divisions in the country. In a show of unity, Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish council representatives appeared before journalists, calling on Iraqis to maintain calm "in order to cheat our enemies of the chance to inflict evil on the nation."
Council member Adnan Pachachi suggested that the signing of a newly agreed interim constitution, expected on Wednesday, would be delayed until after a three-day period of national mourning.
Also yesterday, insurgents threw a grenade into a US Army Humvee as it drove down a Baghdad road, killing one 1st Armored Division soldier and wounding another.
The death brings to 548 the number of US service members who have died since the US launched the Iraq war in March. Most have died since US President George W. Bush declared an end to active combat May 1.
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