124 dead after blasts on Iraqi Shi'ite holy day

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Tuesday, March 02, 2004

124 dead after blasts on Iraqi Shi'ite holy day

Blasts tore through Shi'ites marking their holiest day in Baghdad and Kerbala Tuesday, killing at least 124 people on Iraq's bloodiest day since Saddam Hussein's fall.

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Blasts tore through Shi'ites marking their holiest day in Baghdad and Kerbala Tuesday, killing at least 124 people on Iraq's bloodiest day since Saddam Hussein's fall.

Furious leaders of the country's 60 percent Shi'ite majority branded the attacks an attempt to ignite civil war.

Polish troops in Kerbala and U.S. soldiers in Baghdad said the blasts were caused by mortars which landed among huge crowds of Shi'ites in near-simultaneous attacks on the two cities.

The U.S. military said last month it had evidence al Qaeda guerrillas were planning to attack Shi'ites to spark sectarian violence.

At least five explosions shook Kerbala, a holy city where more than two million Shi'ites from Iraq, Iran and further afield had gathered. Colonel Raed Nabil, the city police chief, said at least 70 Iraqis and Iranians were killed in the attacks.

In Baghdad, four blasts hit the holiest Shi'ite mosque, the Kadhimiya mosque in the north of the capital. The health minister said at least 54 people were killed but the number of scattered body parts hampered collating a death toll.

One medic said the Baghdad toll could be more than 75.

In a separate attack in Baghdad, guerrillas threw a bomb at a U.S. military vehicle early Tuesday, killing one American soldier and seriously wounding another, the army said. The death took to 379 the number of U.S. soldiers killed in action since the start of the U.S.-led war in Iraq nearly a year ago.

Shi'ites had packed Kerbala and some districts of Baghdad to mark Ashura, the 10th day of the month of Muharram when according to tradition Imam Hussein, grandson of the Prophet Mohammad, was killed in battle more than 13 centuries ago.

During the ceremony -- banned under the Sunni Muslim Saddam -- Shi'ites beat their heads and chests and gash their heads with swords to show their grief and echo the suffering of Imam Hussein.

"CRIMINAL ACT"

"This criminal act, on the holy day that marks the martyrdom of Hussein, shows that the terrorists respect no boundaries, that they will kill visitors, pilgrims from Iraq and innocents of all kinds," said Hamid al-Bayati, a senior official in the Shi'ite Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq.

"The people behind this act are what remains of the regime, backed by people like al Qaeda with the goal of igniting civil strife, but we and the rest of the Iraqi people are aware of this danger and will not succumb to it."

The U.S. military said in a statement that "those initiating these attacks are cowards and terrorists." Officers said they had no information on who was behind the attacks. U.S. forces in Iraq said previously they had intercepted a computer disc with a letter from Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian who Washington suspects of working for al Qaeda with a $10 million bounty on his head.

The U.S. military said the letter urged suicide bombings against Shi'ites in a bid to spark civil war.

"Fighting the Shia is the way to take the nation to battle," read a U.S. translation of the document. "We will undertake suicide operations and use car bombs to harm them."

Pilgrims in Kerbala scattered after the blasts, panicking, weeping and screaming. Paramedics rushed the wounded to a makeshift open-air hospital. Some of the dead were taken away in garbage trucks, others covered by black shrouds where they lay.

Shi'ites who had earlier gashed open their heads with swords queued up to give blood to help the wounded.

Monday, the competing religious and ethnic groups in Iraq's U.S.-appointed Governing Council forged an interim constitution, putting aside differences over the role of Islam, representation for women and Kurdish demands for autonomy.

Shi'ites, persecuted for decades under Saddam, were forced to give up many of their key demands during the talks. They had wanted Islam to be recognized as the main source of legislation. Instead it was recognized as a source -- and a bill of rights guaranteed religious freedom.

Source: agencies

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