Suicide attacks in Baghdad, Iraq's south kill 52

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080728/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq

BAGHDAD - A roadside bomb and three female suicide attackers exploded in quick succession among Shiite pilgrims in Baghdad on Monday, while in the country's north, another suicide bomber attacked a Kurdish protest rally. At least 52 people were killed, officials said.

The attacks were a blow to recent security gains that have seen violence in Iraq drop to its lowest levels in more than four years.

The violence began in Baghdad, when a roadside bomb and three suicide attackers exploded in quick succession among crowds of Shiite pilgrims marking the death of an eighth-century saint, killing at least 32 people and wounding 102, police and hospital officials said.

"At about 8 a.m. three female suicide bombers detonated themselves among pilgrims heading to Kazimiyah," the main Iraqi military spokesman in Baghdad, Brig. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi said in a statement posted on his Web site.

A senior U.S. military official blamed al-Qaida in Iraq for the attacks in Baghdad.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was releasing the information ahead of a formal statement, gave a slightly lower casualty toll of 20 killed and 70 wounded and said two of the bombers were believed to be women.

The attacks in Baghdad took place in the mainly Shiite Karradah district, which is several miles away from the destination of the pilgrimage in Kazimiyah in northern Baghdad. Most of the dead were women and children, police and health officials said.

"I heard women and children crying and shouting and I saw burned women as dead bodies lied in pools of blood on the street," Mustapha Abdullah, a 32-year-old man who was injured in the stomach and legs, said from the hospital where he was being treated.

It was the deadliest attack in Baghdad since June 17, when a truck bombing killed 63 people in Hurriyah, a neighborhood that saw some of the worst Shiite-Sunni slaughter in 2006.

In a separate attack, another suicide bomber killed at least 20 people and wounded scores of others at a Kurdish rally in the northern city of Kirkuk, Iraqi authorities said.

The demonstrators were protesting a provincial elections measure blocked in parliament because of disagreement over a power-sharing formula in the disputed city of Kirkuk, an oil-rich area.

Maj. Gen. Jamal Tahir, a Kirkuk police spokesman, said police found a car bomb nearby and detonated it safely, Tahir said.

After the explosion, dozens of angry Kurds opened fire on the offices of a Turkomen political party, which opposes Kurdish claims on Kirkuk.

A police official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media, said no one was hurt in the attack and that the party offices were placed under police protection.

Suicide bombings are increasingly carried out by women, who are more easily able to hide explosives under their all-encompassing black Islamic robes, or abayas, and often are not searched at checkpoints.

But security forces have deployed about 200 women this week to search female pilgrims near Kazimiyah, where the Shiite saint Imam Moussa al-Kadhim is buried in a golden domed shrine.

Since the 2003 ouster of Saddam Hussein, who was a Sunni, Shiite political parties have encouraged huge turnouts at religious festivals to display the majority sect's power in Iraq. Sunni religious extremists have often targeted the gatherings to foment sectarian war, but that has not stopped the Shiites.

In 2005, at least 1,000 people also were killed in a bridge stampede caused by rumors of a suicide bomber in Baghdad during the Kazimiyah pilgrimage.