Blasts kill at least 143 at Iraqi Shiite shrines
430 wounded in Baghdad, Karbala attacks; death toll may go higher

Peter Andrews / Reuters
Iraqis carrying the wounded run from the second of a series of explosions in Karbala on Tuesday. FREE VIDEO


• Angry response
March 2: Iraqi Shiites focused their anger over simultaneous suicide bombings on U.S. soldiers who responded to the attacks. NBC's Don Teague reports from Baghdad.
MSNBC



The Associated Press
Updated: 5:25 p.m. ET March 02, 2004BAGHDAD, Iraq - Suicide bombers carried out simultaneous attacks on Shiite Muslim shrines in Iraq on Tuesday, detonating multiple explosions that ripped through crowds of pilgrims. At least 143 people were killed and 430 wounded — the bloodiest day since the end of major fighting in May.


Unofficial reports, however, put the death toll in Baghdad and Karbala as high as 223.

U.S. officials and Iraqi leaders named an al-Qaida-linked Jordanian militant, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, as a “prime suspect” for the attacks, saying he seeks to spark a Sunni-Shiite civil war to wreck U.S. plans to hand over power to the Iraqis on June 30.

But some Shiites lashed out at U.S. forces, accusing them of not maintaining security on the holiest day of the Shiite calendar. The blasts in Baghdad and Karbala fanned fear and anger at a time when leaders of the Shiite majority are pressing for more power in a future government after years of oppression under Saddam Hussein.

The devastating explosions came on the climactic day of the 10-day Shiite mourning festival Ashoura commemorating the 7th century martyrdom of the prophet Muhammad’s grandson Hussein.

Similar attack in Pakistan
The bombings also happened about two hours before an attack on a Shiite procession in Quetta, Pakistan, that killed at least 42 people — including two attackers — and wounded more than 160.



Tens of thousands of pilgrims from Iraq, Iran and other Shiite communities were massed around the golden-domed Imam Hussein shrine in the holy city of Karbala and the Kazimiya shrine in Baghdad when the explosions went off about 10 a.m.

In Karbala, women tripped over their long, black robes as they ran. Police wept at the sight of the mangled and torn bodies of pilgrims, their blood pooling in the streets.

“I was walking away from the tea stand when I heard someone shouting ‘Allahu Akbar.’ I turned my head and saw a tall, bearded man,” said Ali Haidar. “A split second later, he exploded, his clothes flying upward. The sound was deafening. Bodies, feet, arms were everywhere. Pieces of flesh flew at me.”

In Baghdad, wooden carts for ferrying elderly pilgrims were used instead as impromptu gurneys, stacked with the wounded and dead. Torn bodies were sprawled across the mosaic-walled courtyard inside the Kazimiya shrine, and thousands of shoes — left at the shrine’s doorstep as the faithful prayed inside — were blown across the square.

Deadly attacks
Chronology of bomb attacks in Iraq since the war


‘Bodies began to fly ... ’
“I heard a deafening explosion, and bodies began to fly and land next to me,” said Amar Dawas, sitting atop a pile of tangled mattresses, head down and scratching his left heel.

Unofficial casualty reports, put the death toll in Baghdad and Karbala as high as 223.




“There were also hands and legs which we had to bring down from the roof,” said the 24-year-old worker, whose white T-shirt was stained with blood.

Three suicide bombers attacked Kazimiya shrine, killing 58 and wounding 200, while at least one suicide attacker blew himself up at Karbala, where 85 were killed and 230 were wounded, U.S. Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said.

However, a spokesman for Iraq’s Governing Council visiting Karbala put the death toll there at 101, including 15 children, with more than 300 wounded.

In Tehran, the spokesman for the Iranian Interior Ministry, Jahanbakhsh Khanjani, said at least 22 Iranian pilgrims died and 69 were wounded in the Karbala blasts. He said other Iranians may have been among the casualties at Kazimiya.

Shrines had been long denied
Iranians by the tens of thousands have flooded across the common border with Iraq since Saddam’s ouster, able to visit the most important Shiite shrines for the first time in decades.

The toll could have been worse. A fourth suicide bomber was captured at Kazimiya after his explosives failed to detonate. Police in the southern Shiite city of Basra discovered two women strapped with explosives marching in an Ashoura procession, and other bombs were found near Shiite mosques in Basra and Najaf.


Hadi Mizban / AP
A U.S. soldier tries to put out a fire that engulfed a Hummer military vehicle following an attack on a U.S. convoy in Baghdad, Iraq, on Tuesday morning. One soldier was killed and another wounded.
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U.S. intelligence officials have long been concerned about the possibility of attacks during Ashoura. Last month, U.S. officials released what they said was a letter by al-Zarqawi outlining a strategy of spectacular attacks on Shiites, aimed at pitting Shiites against Sunnis in civil war.

“The terrorists want sectarian violence because they believe that is the only way they can stop Iraq’s march toward the democracy that the terrorists fear,” said Iraq’s top U.S. administrator, L. Paul Bremer. “They will lose because the Iraqi people want and will have democracy, freedom and a sovereign Iraqi government.”

Members of Iraq’s U.S.-appointed Governing Council quickly tried to quiet sectarian divisions. Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish council representatives urged Iraqis to “maintain unity” to “cheat our enemies of the chance to inflict evil on the nation.”

The deadly attacks forced the delay of a key milestone in the path toward the U.S. handover — the planned Thursday signing of an interim constitution approved by the council this week.

But coalition spokesman Dan Senor said plans for the June 30 handover would not be affected.

“This was a very sophisticated attack. It was very well coordinated, timed to two significant events,” the Ashoura ceremonies and the signing of the constitution, said Kimmitt, the U.S. general. “This clearly shows the signs of a well-organized group.”

Anger directed at Americans
But much of the outrage of Shiites was directed at the Americans.

“This is the work of Jews and American occupation forces,” a loudspeaker outside Kazimiya blared.

At Kazimiya, a mob of Iraqis assaulted U.S. troops and medics who tried to control crowds and assist the wounded.




Inside, cleric Hassan Toaima told an angry crowd, “We demand to know who did this so that we can avenge our martyrs.”

At Kazimiya, a mob of Iraqis assaulted U.S. troops and medics who tried to control crowds and help the wounded, pelting them with stones and forcing their convoy of Humvees back into a nearby walled outpost. Two soldiers suffered broken bones. When the Iraqis tried to storm the outpost, U.S. soldiers fired tear gas to disperse them.

In Lebanon, Sheik Hamed Khafaf, a spokesman for Iraq’s leading Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani, said American soldiers ignored repeated requests to bolster security for the pilgrims.

Foreigners also blamed
Kimmitt said U.S. and other coalition troops have a policy of staying away from religious sites and mosques out of respect. Instead, he said, American troops kept an “outer cordon” of checkpoints. Polish forces are responsible for security in Karbala.

‘Show us who they are, show their faces on TV and then hang them where they carried out their crimes.’


— IMAD ANBA
Basra citizen


Many Shiites blamed foreigners for the attacks.

“No one would do such a thing to his own country,” said Imad Anba, a 33-year-old butcher in Basra. “Show us who they are, show their faces on TV and then hang them where they carried out their crimes.”

Kimmitt said he believed a mixture of Iraqis and non-Iraqis carried out the bombings. In Basra, police arrested a Syrian and an Iraqi after discovering a car bomb parked outside a Shiite mosque Tuesday.

Also Tuesday, insurgents threw a grenade into a U.S. Army Humvee as it drove through Baghdad, killing one 1st Armored Division soldier and wounding another. The death brings to 548 the number of U.S. service members who have died since the United States launched the Iraq war in March. Most have died since President Bush declared an end to active combat May 1.

Ryan