Four people were killed in Baghdad on Friday in a series of bomb attacks aimed at Shi’ite pilgrims marking a key religious ceremony, an Interior Ministry official said.
A roadside bomb at the entrance to the sprawling Shi’ite district of Sadr City ripped through a bus, killing three pilgrims and wounding eight as they returned from the shrine city of Karbala in central Iraq, the official said.
The bombing struck at about 9am (06.00GMT), the official, who requested anonymity, told Agence France-Presse.
”I was inside my house when we heard an explosion, and all the windows of my house shattered,” local trader Abu Mohammed said.
”The inside of the bus was covered in blood. The police took the wounded to Sadr City’s hospital for treatment.” he said.
Local resident Abbas Jumaa (27), said: ”I saw women and old men, I don’t know why they attacked them.
”They are only pilgrims and they don’t carry guns. So why would anyone attack them?”
A second bombing at the edge of Sadr City an hour later wounded another five people, also travelling in a minibus from Karbala, 100km south of the capital.
One person was killed and five wounded in a separate roadside bombing at around the same time on a minibus carrying pilgrims in the Zayune neighbourhood of central Baghdad, the official said.
Roads to and from Karbala have been crowded with pilgrims in vehicles or on foot this week as Shi’ites commemorate the birth of the Twelfth Imam, a disappeared ninth century Muslim leader revered as a coming messiah.
Pilgrims in the holy city held candle-lighting ceremonies from midnight to dawn at a mosque built on a site said to be the last place visited by the Mahdi before his disappearance.
Streets in the city cleared out in the early hours of the morning with no reports of any violence.
Violence in Iraq has dropped off markedly in recent months, but attacks against security forces and civilians remain common in Baghdad, the restive northern city of Mosul and oil-rich Kirkuk. — AFP
