BAGHDAD – In a second day of major bloodshed in Iraq, two female suicide bombers blew themselves up outside a Shia Muslim shrine in Baghdad yesterday, killing 60 people, police said.
The attack was the deadliest single incident in Iraq since a truck bomb in Baghdad killed 63 people on June 17th last year. The two-day death toll of at least 150 raises concerns that a recent decline in violence may have been only a temporary lull.
At least 125 people were wounded in the blasts, which took place within minutes of one another at the Imam Moussa al-Kadhim shrine in the Shia neighbourhood of Kadhimiya. Many of the dead and wounded were Iranian Shia pilgrims.
Police said the attackers approached separate gates to the shrine, which contains the tombs of two important holy men, or imams, and has been a frequent target of Sunni Islamist extremists who consider Shia Muslims to be heretics.
They used sidestreets to get there and this enabled them to avoid checkpoints. They blew themselves up in the crowd, Maj Gen Jihad al-Jabiri, head of an interior ministry unit that investigates explosions said.
The attackers placed two leather bags full of explosives among crowds flocking around the gates yesterday, the Muslim holy day, he said. They were detonated by grenades from a short distance. Earlier reports that the suicide bombers were wearing explosive vests were not accurate, Maj Gen Jabiri said.
The Kadhimiya blasts followed two suicide bombs on Thursday, one in Baghdad and the other in the northeastern province of Diyala, in which at least 89 people died.
Most of the 57 dead in Diyala were Iranians, who have flocked to Iraq’s Shia holy sites in the millions since Sunni dictator Saddam Hussein was ousted in 2003. – (Reuters)