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Baghdad (AFP) Dec 8, 2010 At least two people were killed and 24 others wounded, including seven Iranian pilgrims, in attacks across Iraq on Wednesday, security officials said. A roadside bomb exploded near a bus carrying Iranian pilgrims to the Shiite shrine city of Karbala, south of Baghdad. The blast came as Shiites from around the world descend on Karbala for the commemoration of Ashura, which marks the slaying of the revered Imam Hussein by the armies of the Sunni caliph Yazid in 680. It struck the bus in southwest Baghdad while it was en route to Karbala, wounding seven Iranians, officials from the interior and defence ministries said on condition of anonymity. The bombing followed two separate attacks in the capital on Saturday that also targeted Iranian pilgrims visiting Shiite holy sites in Iraq, killing six religious tourists. Every day, thousands of pilgrims, many of them from Iran and other countries with large Shiite populations, visit Karbala and Iraq's other major Shiite shrines in Samarra, Najaf and Baghdad. That number rises dramatically as millions of pilgrims travel to Karbala, the home of shrines to Imam Hussein and his half-brother Imam Abbas, for Ashura. According to the calculations of Iraq's top Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Ashura is to climax this year on December 17. In Taji, 25 kilometres (15 miles) north of the capital, one person was killed and 17 others were wounded when a car bomb detonated near a popular restaurant, an interior ministry source said. The target was an Iraqi army patrol but no soldiers were among the casualties. And in the western Baghdad district of Al-Amriyah, gunmen using silencers killed a police capital, the source said. Also on Wednesday, five Iraqis suspected of belonging to a group linked to Al-Qaeda were arrested in the main northern city of Mosul, defence ministry spokesman Mohammed al-Askari said. He said they were suspected of having carried out the murders of five Christians in separate attacks as well as the November 21 killing of television journalist Mazin Mardan. While violence has dropped dramatically across Iraq since its peak in 2006 and 2007, attacks remain common, especially in Baghdad and the restive city of Mosul. The number of people killed in violence in Iraq last month was the lowest in a year for the second month running, with 171 people -- 105 civilians, 23 soldiers and 43 policemen -- dying in attacks.
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