40 killed as third bombing hits Iraq
In what is believed to be the year's worst attack, a female bomber targeted women and children on a pilgrimage.
BAGHDAD - A female suicide bomber struck a tent filled with women and children resting during a pilgrimage south of Baghdad yesterday, killing 40 people and wounding about 80 in the deadliest of three consecutive days of attacks against Shiite worshipers.
The grisly assault, which also appeared to be the deadliest in Iraq this year, demonstrates the determination of some extremists to reignite sectarian warfare. It also underscores how fragile security remains here, even as the United States turns over more responsibility to the Iraqis.
Witnesses said many of the injured were hurt in a stampede as terrified survivors, most of them poor Shiites exhausted after days of walking, scrambled away from the tent in terror.
They left behind piles of clothing, small rugs, and toddlers' strollers, television video showed. A dismembered leg believed to have been the bomber's lay wrapped in a robe in a cardboard box.
"It was a horrific scene with dead and screaming injured people on the ground," said Sadiya Kadom, 40, a Baghdad resident who was near the tent when the blast occurred.
No group claimed responsibility. But suicide bombings against Shiite civilians are the signature attack of al-Qaeda in Iraq, which U.S. commanders say has been severely weakened but not defeated.
"What kind of belief system do these people have?" a man shouted as he held his dazed and wounded son, wrapped in a blanket. "Are they monsters?"
The bomber was successful in detonating her explosives despite a major security operation by Iraqi authorities to protect the hundreds of thousands of pilgrims streaming into the Shiite holy city of Karbala for religious rituals that culminate Monday.
The blast occurred at midday about 40 miles south of Baghdad and 10 miles north of Karbala. Separate tents for men and women offered pilgrims food, beverages, and a place to rest along the routes to Karbala.
A procession leader, Mussa al-Kadhem, said he was drinking tea with a group of men when he noticed a woman dressed in a full-body black abaya robe and with her face covered wander into the women's tent.
He said he sensed something was wrong. "As soon as some people asked who she was . . . there was a huge explosion," he said.
Hussein Faris, 39, said that he was injured in the stomach but that his wife, who was walking behind him closer to the tent, was killed. "I was so terrified," he said. "People nearby were running in terror, and many got hurt in the stampede."
Provincial health official Mohammed Abbas and police reported 40 people were killed and 81 wounded. Most of the victims were women and children, he said.
The latest attack occurred one day after a suicide bomber killed eight people and wounded more than 50 in Karbala. On Wednesday, at least 12 were killed and more than 40 wounded in a series of bombings in Baghdad targeting pilgrims traveling to Karbala.
The pilgrims will be celebrating Monday's end of 40 days of mourning that follow Ashoura, the anniversary of the seventh-century death of the Prophet Muhammad's grandson Hussein.
U.S. officials have said violence has dropped by nearly 90 percent, but U.S. commanders have warned that security in Iraq remains fragile. Although violence has fallen, the number of female suicide bombers in Iraq has grown. Last year, they attempted or carried out 32 attacks, compared with eight in 2007.
