Scores Killed in Attack on Shiite Pilgrims in Iraq

Scores Killed in Attack on Shiite Pilgrims in Iraq
By STEVEN LEE MYERS
Copyright by The Associated Press
Published: February 1, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/02/world/middleeast/02iraq.html?th&emc=th


BAGHDAD — A woman who veiled her explosives in a black robe struck a column of Shiite pilgrims on the outskirts of Baghdad on Monday in a suicide attack that Iraqi officials had predicted but could not stop.

Shiites entered Karbala, Iraq, on Monday in an annual pilgrimage banned under Saddam Hussein but resumed after the United States invasion in 2003.

The attack — coming a week after four enormous bombings in Baghdad using vehicles driven by suicide bombers — killed at least 38 people and wounded scores more along a major roadway in an industrial district on the northern edge of Baghdad, according to officials.

The bombing occurred despite what officials had pledged would be intensified security for the annual pilgrimage to Shiite Islam’s holiest shrine in Iraq, underscoring the ability of insurgents to outmaneuver the country’s security forces, seemingly at will.

Two more attacks — one with a grenade, another with a roadside bomb — later struck still more pilgrims in southern Baghdad, wounding 16.

The attacks compounded a sense of insecurity in Baghdad ahead of a parliamentary election in March, which already is inflaming political tensions.

The bomber was able to mingle among pilgrims, evidently unsearched, before detonating what officials described as a vest or belt of explosives.

The force of the blast and shrapnel cut through a crowd near a tent that had been erected, like thousands of others across the country, to provide shelter, food and water for pilgrims making their way to Karbala to commemorate Imam Hussein, a grandson of the Prophet Muhammad.

One man who was wounded, Aqil Jassim, spoke of blood “falling like rain.” Another blamed the “blind hatred” of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, a domestic insurgent group, for the bombing, but Mr. Jassim also faulted Iraq’s police and army, which once again raised doubts about their tactics, training and professionalism.

One of Iraq’s main weapons against bombs has been a detector of dubious efficacy, whose manufacturer now faces fraud charges in Britain.

“The security forces are responsible because they were not searching anyone,” Mr. Jassim said in a hospital in Baquba, northeast of Baghdad, where some of the wounded were treated.

The Baghdad Operations Command, which oversees security in the capital region, later said that the bomber had detonated her explosives near a place where women were in fact being searched. Among those killed, the command said in a statement, were three women who had volunteered to conduct searches of other women.

Even as word spread of yet another attack, the command’s spokesman, Maj. Gen. Qassim Atta al-Moussawi, announced that “a large number” of 134 officers and soldiers who were under investigation in the wake of last week’s attacks would face court-martial for negligence and dereliction of duty.

He also told Iraqis and officials to be vigilant. In a statement, he said that insurgents had developed “new highly explosive formulas” to avoid detection.

Hundreds of thousands of Shiites from Iraq, Iran and beyond make their way to Karbala for the pilgrimage each year. Many do so on foot, a journey that can take days or even weeks.

The pilgrimage was banned by Saddam Hussein’s Baathist government, resumed with fervor by the country’s Shiite majority after the American invasion in 2003, and was attacked regularly since.

The pilgrims, along with the tents, which are festooned with the green and black flags of the faith, clog roads headed to Karbala for days before the pilgrimage’s culmination, known as Arbaeen, which is Friday. Despite road closings and other measures to heighten security, the attacks have continued as relentlessly as the marchers.

Samir Mahmoud, a pilgrim making his way to Karbala from a village north of Baquba, was knocked unconscious by the bombing. When he came to, he said, he witnessed a scene of carnage, with stunned survivors staggering among body parts.

Before the blast he spoke with a man wearing a white shroud inscribed with words saying it would wrap his body if he died on the road to Karbala. He was among those killed, Mr. Mahmoud said.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the latest violence. The main insurgency group here, the Islamic State of Iraq, claimed responsibility for the previous attacks, which were coordinated and were clearly intended to attack the credibility of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki’s government.

The use of suicide bombers, including women, is not new, but it had diminished recently. Diyala, the province from which many of the pilgrims killed on Monday came, has long been a center of recruiting and training of female bombers.

A senior military commander in Babel Province, south of Baghdad, was quoted in the newspaper Sabah on Monday announcing the arrest of a man responsible for recruiting suicide bombers to attack the Karbala pilgrims. It was not clear if there was any connection to Monday’s bombing.

Sa’ad al-Izzi contributed reporting from Baghdad, and Iraqi employees of The New York Times from Baghdad and Baquba, Iraq.