Iraq: Three bombings kill 12 Shiites pilgrims in Karbala

A triple attack Shiites made Monday at least 12 dead and 150 wounded, showing that the sectarian conflict in Iraq still lingers within one year from the departure of the last U.S. military contingent.
A triple attack Shiites made Monday at least 12 dead and 150 wounded, showing that the sectarian conflict in Iraq still lingers within one year from the departure of the last U.S. military contingent.
Three car bombs exploded in the middle of Shia pilgrims who were heading to the holy city of Karbala, south of Baghdad, to attend a religious ritual of mourning.
"Three cars exploded this morning, two at 08:30 am (0530 GMT) and a third 30 minutes later: Twelve people died and 150 were injured," said vice-president of the province Noussayef Jassem.
Pilgrimages on Ashura Arabaïn then, 40 days later, which symbolize the schism between the two main Muslim communities - Shi'a and Sunni - are annually under attack from Sunni insurgents.
Hussein, grand-son of Muhammad and Ali's son, was killed in 680 by the Umayyad caliph Yazid's troops during a battle in the desert of Karbala. It was a conflict for the leadership of Muslims 48 years after the death of the founder of Islam.
Two suicide car bombings against pilgrims took place about 8:30 am (0530 GMT) Monday near a bus stop at Ibrahimiya, 20 km east of Karbala, killing one and injuring 20, including three women and two children, said Alaa Bder Hamoudi, head of health department of the province.
The third attack Hindiya, three kilometers further east, has eleven dead, including three women and a child, and 130 wounded, including 30 women and ten children, the source said.
"I was waiting in the parking lot where my friends and relatives when the explosion took place", said Jassim al-Zahra, 32, originally from the province of Wasit, which had been forced to park his car far from the city because traffic is prohibited during the pilgrimage.
"I was hit in the arm and I saw on the ground dead and injured," he said on his hospital bed.
In other attacks Monday in Baghdad, General Thamer Hassan Saleh, attached to the Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, was killed in the explosion of a roadside bomb near his home in the neighborhood of Ghazaliya (west ), an official of the Ministry of Interior. An intelligence officer was also injured in the explosion.
In the north-west of the capital, eight people were injured by another bomb near a petrol station in the neighborhood of Shula, "he added.
Two members of the Sahwa militias fighting against al-Qaeda were killed at dawn by gunmen in the town of al-Hamira in the province of Kirkuk, north of Baghdad, local police said.
Thursday, 45 people were killed in the explosion of three car bombs around Karbala, home to the mausoleums of two of the most revered imams of Shiism.
Iraqi police announced the arrest of two members of the "Islamic Army of Iraq," an organization formed shortly after the invasion led by the United States in 2003 and composed of Salafi and former Baath party cadres Saddam Hussein.
Violently anti-Shia, it was also shown by a series of kidnappings in 2004, including an Italian journalist and killed her two French journalists released after several months of captivity.
The violence in Iraq appeared to decline in November after the conclusion of an agreement to share power last month allowed the formation of a government. But the country was the scene last week of three days of bloody attacks that killed at least 116 deaths.