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Iraq

Blasts target praying Shiites

Attacks during Friday services kill at least 35 and are condemned by Iraqis and their leaders as the acts of "infidels."

BAGHDAD - Many kneeling in prayer, Shiite Muslims were attacked in their mosques and on the streets Friday on the eve of their holiest day, with five bombings killing at least 35 people in the deadliest day in Iraq since the Jan. 30 national elections.

There were no immediate claims of responsibility for the blasts - three of them suicide attacks - in Baghdad and Iskandariyah, south of the capital. Shiites blamed radical Sunni Muslim insurgents, who have staged car bombs, shootings and kidnappings to try to destabilize Iraq's reconstruction.

"Those infidel Wahhabis, those Osama bin Laden followers, they did this because they hate Shiites," said Sari Abdullah, a worshiper at Baghdad's al-Khadimain mosque who was injured by shrapnel from the explosion. "They are afraid of us. They are not Muslims. They are infidels."

The imam at the al-Khadimain mosque used the minaret's loudspeakers to appeal for blood donations.

At the al-Bayaa mosque in the capital, quick action from a security guard may have prevented more bloodshed. Amer Mayah said he opened fire on a man - apparently a second suicide attacker at the mosque - who was trying to pull two grenades from his pocket, "and immediately he exploded."

The attacks happened on the eve of Ashura, which marks the 10th day of the Islamic holy month of Muharram and the death of Imam Hussein, the grandson of the prophet Muhammad.

Similar attacks last year during Ashura killed 181 people in Baghdad and Karbala.

Mouwaffaq al-Rubaie, the national security adviser for the interim government, accused Jordanian-born terror suspect Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and former Baath party members of trying to provoke a sectarian civil war.

"It's a paradoxical idea when they claim that they are fighting the infidels and at the same time, they kill Muslims during Friday prayers," he said.

He said Shiites, who make up 60 percent of the population, would not call for retaliation against the minority Sunnis who were favored by Saddam Hussein's regime.

Walid Al-Hilly, a leading figure of the Shiite-led Dawa Party, said the attacks would not stop the Shiites from trying to cooperate with Sunnis and other minorities in a new government.

"They kill unarmed men, women and children who want to glorify the ceremonies of Ashura. These terrorist actions will not intimidate us nor make us change the way that we choose freedom from tyranny and oppression," he told Al-Jazeera television. "We chose the path of brotherhood, cooperation and unity between Sunnis, Shiites, Kurds, Shabak, Turkomen and Christians and all other sects."

Shiite politicians are negotiating over whom to nominate for prime minister. Former Pentagon favorite Ahmad Chalabi, a secular Shiite, claimed in an Associated Press interview on Friday that he had enough support to best the other leading contender, interim vice president Ibrahim al-Jaafari.

Friday's attacks on Shiites began with two suicide bombings outside mosques in predominantly Shiite neighborhoods of Baghdad.

The first explosion at the al-Khadimain mosque killed 15, while the second, at al-Bayaa, took 10 more lives, an official at Baghdad's al-Yarmouk Hospital said on condition of anonymity. The al-Khadimain bombing occurred just outside the entrance to the mosque as people were still inside praying. The al-Bayaa attack also took place outside the mosque, as prayers were about to end.

Another explosion hit a Shiite religious procession, killing two and injuring five, according to Iraqi police Lt. Waed Hussein. A fourth attack, involving a suicide bomber, struck an Iraqi police and National Guard checkpoint in a Sunni neighborhood, killing at least one policeman.

Later Friday, a car bomb exploded outside a Shiite mosque in Iskandariyah - 30 miles south of the capital - where hundreds had gathered, killing seven people and wounding 10, doctors said.

Iraq's government has partially sealed its land borders from Friday to Tuesday to avoid bloodshed. Exceptions will be made for trucks carrying food or oil. Baghdad's international airport will remain open for flights, aviation industry officials said.

A U.S. soldier was killed Friday on patrol in northern Iraq and a second was killed in the south, the military said. Three other American soldiers were killed in separate attacks in the country's north on Wednesday and Thursday.

A little known insurgent group, the Mujahedeen in Iraq, released a videotape showing two Indonesian journalists who disappeared Feb. 8. The group threatened to kill them if the Indonesian government did not explain why the journalists were in Iraq.

When word went out Friday that the United States was looking for 250 applicants for a new Fallujah police force, the turnout was so big it nearly turned into a riot as men pushed to get to the head of the line. It took two hours to get the nearly 800 jobless men into lines that could be processed.

[Last modified February 19, 2005, 00:58:04]