Two bombs tore into crowds of pilgrims in the holy Iraqi Shia city of Kerbala today, killing at least 12 and wounding dozens as hundreds of thousands of people streamed in for a religious rite, officials said.
The first bomb exploded in a car park on the outskirts of the city where pilgrims taking part in the annual Arbain event had parked their vehicles, killing between four and six people, according to Deputy Health Minister Khamis al-Saad and security officials. Forty-nine were wounded, said Saad.
A few hours later a second car bomb killed another eight to 10 people and wounded 92, around 10km north of Kerbala, Saad and local hospital officials said.
The explosions occurred despite the deployment of 120,000 police and soldiers during Arbain, a major Shia ceremony that has been regularly targeted by Sunni Islamist al-Qaeda and other militants since the 2003 fall of Sunni dictator Saddam Hussein.
"It's difficult for us to control every inch of the province. There are waves of pilgrims," an army captain said.
Iraq has been rocked by a series of blasts in recent days ahead of the culmination tomorrow of Arbain. More than 100 pilgrims, police recruits and police have been killed in an area ranging from Kerbala to mainly Sunni areas north of Baghdad.
The attacks pose a challenge to Iraqi security forces and Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's newly appointed Shia-led government as US troops prepare to withdraw fully this year.
Al-Qaeda's Iraqi affiliate, the Islamic State of Iraq, claimed credit in a statement posted last night for recent suicide attacks on police, describing police recruits killed in Saddam's hometown of Tikrit just under a week ago as "treacherous daggers".
Agencies