Bombers target Shiites as hundreds of thousands turn out for key Shiite rituals

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Assailants struck Shiite worshippers in three Iraqi cities Tuesday, killing at least 39 people in bombings and ambushes during the climax of ceremonies marking Ashoura, the holiest day in the Shiite calendar.\nIn apparent retaliation, mortar shells slammed into predominantly Sunni neighborhoods in Baghdad hours later, killing at least five people and wounding 20, officials said.\nTens of thousands of Shiite Muslims converged on the holy city of Karbala -- where the 7th-century battle took place that cemented the schism between Sunnis and Shiites -- beating their chests and heads to mark the death of the Prophet Muhammad's grandson. The entire city was sealed off, all vehicles were banned, and pilgrims were searched at numerous checkpoints, a day after the Iraqi army said it had foiled a plot by a messianic Shiite group to storm the nearby city of Najaf.\nThe bloodiest attack Tuesday occurred when a suicide bomber blew himself up among a crowd of worshippers entering a Shiite mosque, killing 19 people and wounding 54 in Mandali, a predominantly Shiite city northeast of Baghdad and near the Iranian border.\nTo the north, a bomb in a garbage can exploded as scores of Shiites -- most them Kurds -- were performing rituals in Khanaqin, a majority Kurdish city also near the Iranian border. At least 13 people were killed and 39 were wounded, police Maj. Idriss Mohammed said.\n"I was participating in Ashoura ceremonies with my son and all of a sudden the bloodshed hit," Abdul Jasim Hassan said, holding his 11-year-old son, Hussein, whose right leg was bleeding.\nNawal Hasson said she pleaded with her husband not to go to the ceremonies but went with him when he refused to stay home.\n"I had a feeling that something might happen, because terrorists are always targeting Shiites," she said.\nThe two bombings occurred on the edge of Diyala province, not far from Baqouba, where fighting has raged for weeks between Sunni insurgents, Shiite militiamen and U.S.-Iraqi troops.\nGunmen in two cars also opened fire on a yellow minibus carrying Shiite pilgrims in the capital, killing at least seven people and wounding seven others, police said.\nIraqi police and military official questioned hundreds of suspects rounded up after a weekend battle near Najaf aimed at preventing a major attack against leading Shiite clerics and pilgrims coinciding with Ashoura.\nThe U.S. military said more than 100 gunmen were captured but it did not say how many were killed. Iraq's Defense Ministry, by contrast, raised its figures on Tuesday to say 263 militants were killed, 210 wounded and 392 captured.\nMinistry spokesman Mohammed al-Askari said those detained included 35 women and 31 children following reports that the gunmen had brought their families with them to make it easier to infiltrate the city.\nDespite the certainty of sectarian violence, millions of Shiites in Iraq were commemorating Ashoura, marching in processions and beating themselves bloody in a frenzied show of grief over the 7th-century death of Imam Hussein, grandson of the Prophet Muhammad and one of the most revered Shiite saints.\nImam Hussein died in the battle of Karbala in A.D. 680. The battle cemented a schism in Islam between Shiites and Sunnis over leadership of the faith, a division that is at the heart of the sectarian violence that has spiraled in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, in particular since the Feb. 22 bombing of a Shiite mosque in Samarra.