Four coordinated explosions killed 15 and injured at least 100 Sept. 25 in Iraq’s Shi’ite holy city of Karbala. The first blast targeted a government building that issues ID cards. Three more explosions followed as police and emergency workers gathered, shearing off the facades of several buildings. The dead included five police and 10 civilians. Four children are among the wounded. This was the latest in a series of recent attacks in the city. On Sept. 22, a suicide bomber killed four pilgrims and wounded 17 as they made their way into Karbala. A Sept. 12 attack on a bus full of pilgrims in Anbar province close to the border of Karbala province and left 22 dead. On Aug.15, car bomb exploded near the police headquarters of Hindiya district, 15 miles east of Karbala, killing three and injuring 42. On July 15, three coordinated bomb blasts in the city targeted pilgrims, claiming more than 100 casualties.
After the Sept. 12 bus attack, security forces from Karbala crossed into Anbar, a mostly Sunni province, and arrested suspects—an action that threatened to provoke a sectarian uprising in Anbar until Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki stepped and ordered their release. (Miami Herald, WP, Sept. 25_
On Sept. 20, suicide bombers killed a leader of the Sahwa (Awakening), a Sunni militia that was backed by US forces, as well as three other people in an attack on a local government compound in Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province. (McClatchy Newspapers, Sept. 24)
A car bomb also killed Shi’ite pilgrims headed for the holy city of Samarra in February.
See our last posts on Iraq, the ongoing sectarian war, and the struggle within Islam.
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Iraq: another attack on Shi’ite mosque
A car bomb exploded Sept. 30 in the parking lot of a Shi’ite mosque in Hillah, about 60 miles south of Baghdad, where mourners had gathered for the funeral of a prominent sheikh, killing 17 people and wounding 48. The mosque and a nearby Shi’ite shrine were damaged in the blast. (AP, Sept. 30)
Iraq: more attacks target Shi’ite civilians
Two explosions killed 15 people and wounded 48 others in Baghdad’s sprawling Shi’ite enclave of Sadr City Oct. 13. The first bomb went off near a home, and second one was detonated in the same area as people gathered at the site of the first blast. All of the 15 were killed in the second, more powerful explosion. (AP, Oct. 13)
The blasts came the day after attacks aimed at police—including two in which assailants slammed explosives-packed cars into police stations—killed 25 in Baghdad. Although security forces were the target, the attacks were in the Shi’ite neighborhoods of Karradah and Hurriyah. (AP, Oct. 12)