More than 70 people were killed in Iraq yesterday (Wednesday) as suspected Sunni insurgents unleashed a wave of terrorist attacks against Shia pilgrims.
The authorities reported 22 car bombings in Baghdad and seven other cities, exposing the fragility of the country's religious fault lines nine years after the fall of Saddam Hussein.
The attacks, the second deadliest since the withdrawal of American troops last December, came as Shia worshippers gathered for the festival of Moussa al-Khadim, a great-grandson of the Prophet Mohammed and one of their most revered imams.
The insurgents made their attacks with apparent ease, despite heightened security, striking at 5am with a bomb at a procession in the town of Taji, north of Baghdad, killing seven people.
The capital city suffered the worst violence, with 10 bombings that killed at least 21 people.
One struck a Shia mosque, while a second was detonated near a refreshment tent in the Khadimiya mosque as pilgrims stopped for breakfast.
"A group of pilgrims were walking and passed by a tent offering food and drinks when a car exploded near them," said Wathiq Muhana, a policeman.
"People were running away covered with blood and bodies were scattered on the ground."
Two simultaneous attacks near a restaurant in the Shia city of Hilla, one carried out by a suicide bomber, killed 20 more. Many of the dead were police recruits travelling in a minibus.
The attacks provided a grim reminder of the sectarian violence that erupted in Iraq in 2006 and 2007, when Shia pilgrims were often targeted as tens of thousands were killed.
Reduced in number, and enjoying significantly less support now that US troops are no longer in the country, the insurgents are thought to lack the capability of returning the country to such bloodshed. However, yesterday's attacks brought this year's death toll from mass bombings to more than 420, with the vast majority of the victims coming from the Shia community.
