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Shiite worshippers killed by bomb { December 2007 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
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Iraq Bomb Attacks Kill at Least 28 Shiite Worshippers (Update2)
By Robin Stringer
Jan. 30 (Bloomberg) -- Bomb attacks on Shiite Muslim worshippers killed at least 28 people and wounded 96 in Iraq's eastern province of Diyala on the final day of a holy festival.
A device hidden in a garbage can killed 12 people and wounded 39 others when it detonated today amid pilgrims in Khanaqin, northeast Iraq, President Jalal Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan party said in a statement on its Arabic- language Web site. The city is 140 kilometers (87 miles) northeast of Baghdad.
A suicide bomber killed 16 people and wounded 57 at a Shiite mosque near Balad Ruz, 80 kilometers southwest of Khanaqin and about 52 kilometers west of the Iranian border, the PUK said.
Religious sites and processions are frequent targets in Iraq's civil conflict between rival religious, territorial and ethnic groups. Violence between Sunni and Shiite Muslim factions is common, and splinter groups within the two sects have also clashed.
The victims of both blasts were worshippers taking part in the final day of the Ashura festival, the PUK said. The event involves 10 days of mourning the death of Imam Hussein, grandson of the prophet Muhammad, whom Shiites believe was decapitated by the Caliph Yazid's armies at the battle of Karbala in 680.
Khanaqin, along with Kirkuk to its west, is one of northern Iraq's oil-rich areas. During the rule of former leader Saddam Hussein, the city underwent a process of ``Arabization'' to expel Kurds from the city.
Bus Ambushed
Gunmen today ambushed a bus carrying Shiite pilgrims, killing at least seven people and wounding another seven, the Associated Press reported, citing police. The attackers drove by the bus in two vehicles and opened fire in the assault in the western Baghdad district of Hay al-Amil.
In Baghdad, a mortar attack killed 10 people and wounded 28 others in the north of the city, the PUK said. Mortar attacks are common between rival neighborhoods in the capital.
Attacks on Shiite worshippers during the 2004 Ashura festival, which took place in March that year, killed at least 170 people in Karbala and Baghdad.
Two days ago, Iraqi and U.S. forces killed hundreds of gunmen who, the Iraqi government said, were Shiite militants from a previously unknown splinter group called ``Soldiers of Heaven'' intent on killing Shiite leaders in Najaf, 70 kilometers south of Karbala. The Iraqi military today revised the total of militants killed in the operation to 262, having said earlier that 200 died.
Footage aired on Iraqi state television showed hundreds of thousands of tearful pilgrims in Karbala, a holy southern city, today mourning the death of Imam Hussein. At noon local time, worshippers slapping their heads and chanting ``Imam Hussein!'' ran in file to Hussein's mausoleum, to signify coming to his aid before he was killed.
To contact the reporter on this story: Robin Stringer in London at rstringer@bloomberg.net .
Last Updated: January 30, 2007 11:04 EST
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