Suicide bombers disrupt holy day

BAGHDAD — Eight suicide bombers struck in quick succession yesterday in a wave of attacks that killed 55 persons as Iraqi Shi’ites marched and lashed themselves with chains in ritual mourning of the seventh-century death of their sect’s founder.

Ninety-one persons have been killed in violence in the past two days.

For the second year running, terrorist attacks on pilgrims shattered the commemoration of Ashura, the holiest day of the Shi’ite religious calendar. A year ago, 181 died in twin bombings in Baghdad and Karbala.

With majority Shi’ites poised to take control of the country for the first time in modern Iraqi history, the interim government and Shi’ite politicians vowed the bloodshed would not cause the nation to spiral into civil war.

The suicide bombings were attempts “to create a religious war within Iraq,” said Mowaffak al-Rubaie, the national-security adviser for the interim government. “Iraqis will not allow this to happen. Iraqis will stand united as Iraqis foremost, and Iraq will not fall into sectarian war.”

“The bombings on Shi’ite mosques and shrines on Ashura by terrorists that call themselves Muslims are in fact actions by terrorists only attempting to spill even more Muslim blood by encouraging sectarian violence,” he said.

Yesterday’s carnage was the deadliest of any day since last month’s elections for a new national assembly, in which the Shi’ite ticket, the United Iraqi Alliance, won 48 percent of the vote.

The alliance was expected to name its candidate for prime minister in the coming days.

As the violence ravaged the country, a five-member U.S. congressional delegation including Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, New York Democrat, met with Iraqi government officials in Baghdad’s heavily fortified green zone.

“The fact that you have these suicide bombers now, wreaking such hatred and violence while people pray, is to me, an indication of their failure,” Mrs. Clinton told reporters.

Bayan Jaber, a leading member of the Shi’ite Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), said the attacks had failed to create a divide between Shi’ites and the Sunni Arab minority.

Shi’ites account for about 60 percent of Iraq’s 26 million people. The Sunnis make up 20 percent of the population, but dominated politics under deposed dictator Saddam Hussein and previous governments after Iraq gained independence from Britain.

Mr. Jaber called the attackers a small faction of Sunnis “who are extremist Wahhabis, who want to spark a civil war in Iraq.” But, he added, “a sectarian war will never occur in Iraq because Iraq is not like Afghanistan or Pakistan. We have tribal, marital and historical relations with Sunnis, and nothing will affect it.”

The death toll rose rapidly yesterday as the terrorists mounted attacks throughout the country employing suicide bombers — responsible for most deaths — mortar fire and gunmen, said Capt. Sabah Yassin, a Defense Ministry official.

One of the deadliest attacks was the work of a suicide car bomber at an Iraqi army checkpoint in Latifiyah, 20 miles south of the capital, killing nine Iraqi soldiers.

Story Continues →