Over 150 killed in Iraq blasts

BAGHDAD -- Multiple suicide bombs struck Shi'ite Muslim shrines in Baghdad and Karbala in nearly simultaneous attacks yesterday morning, killing more than 150 people and wounding hundreds. It was the deadliest day in Iraq since Baghdad fell last April.

US officials said they were certain the tightly synchronized attacks 60 miles apart had been masterminded by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, widely thought to be an Al Qaeda operative in Iraq.

The attacks, carried out as hundreds of thousands of people converged for the holiest day of the Shi'ite calendar, ripped through crowds of worshipers, sending body parts hurtling through the air and spattering blood on the shrines' ornate marble courtyards.

Officials in Tehran said at least 22 Iranian pilgrims were among the dead. An Iranian vice president, Mohammad Ali Abtani, blamed Al Qaeda for the attacks in Iraq and another yesterday on a Shi'ite procession in Pakistan that killed at least 44 people.

As news of the carnage sank in, Iraqi officials and residents questioned whether US military officials had provided adequate security to Shi'ite worshipers, as an attack had been widely expected. The grim toll also raised doubts about the plan by US officials to rapidly transfer security responsibility to Iraqi police and civil defense units.

Facing a barrage of questions last night about the US military's planning, Army Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt told reporters that it is impossible to prevent every terror attack.

"This was a sophisticated attack, very well coordinated," said Kimmitt, deputy chief of US military operations in Iraq. "This was not a pickup team." At least four bombers killed themselves in the two attacks yesterday, and three others were intercepted before they could detonate explosives.

In the shock that followed, distraught Iraqis yesterday vented their fury at US officials. Many said no Muslim would unleash such massacres on the climactic day of the 10-day mourning festival of Ashura, when Iraq's 15 million Shi'ites commemorate the martyrdom of the Prophet Mohammed's grandson Hussein more than 1,300 years ago. Others were incredulous that the massive US armor in Iraq was unable to protect them, and concluded that the Americans had turned their weaponry against Muslims.

"It is you Americans who have done this!" said a man in the yard outside Khadumiyah Hospital in Baghdad, moments after he had found his brother lying dead inside. Doubled over in grief, he lurched toward three US military police standing nearby, as his friends held him back.

Other Iraqis criticized US journalists and smashed cameras. "Why have you Americans done this to us?" shrieked a woman draped from head to toe in black, as she followed a Globe reporter down a street in the Khadumiyah section of Baghdad near the Imam Musa al-Khadam shrine, where at least 58 people were killed.

Iraq's leading Shi'ite political leader, Abdel Aziz al-Hakim, faulted inadequate US security around the shrines for failing to stop the attacks. In the southern city of Basra, two women were arrested with explosives belts, apparently on their way to blow themselves up among Shi'ite worshipers.

In Baghdad, police said late last night that three suicide bombers had penetrated a two-ring security cordon around the Baghdad shrine, entering the mosque's courtyard and detonating explosives strapped around their waists. A fourth was arrested before his explosives belt detonated.

Within moments of the Baghdad attack, a suicide bomber struck 60 miles to the south in the holy city of Karbala, killing at least 100 people, hospital sources said. Other explosive devices and a mortar also were used in the attack, and Karbala police said last night they arrested six suspects.

Shaken and grieving Iraqi officials appealed for calm last night, telling Iraqis not to transform their devastation into violent retaliation. Such tit-for-tat bloodletting would play into the terror operatives' plans, members of Iraq's Governing Council said in a televised news conference.

"This is not against Shi'ites or against Sunnis," said Mowafak al-Rubbaei, a Shi'ite who is a senior member of the council. "It is against Iraq, the whole of Iraq, to destabilize the country."

Iraqi officials declared three days of national mourning. The Shi'ites' spiritual leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, appealed for national unity in a written statement from his office in the holy city of Najaf. A series of increasingly deadly bomb blasts during the past month has suggested that a mounting terror campaign is underway. In an apparent strategy to unravel the political process, the bomb attacks have targeted two groups: religious worshipers and Iraqi security forces. A synchronized double suicide attack in the northern Kurdish city of Erbil in early February killed more than 100 people who had gathered to celebrate the start of a Muslim festival. In mid-February, a suicide truck bomb south of Baghdad killed more than 50 Iraqis lined up outside a police station who had been looking for jobs in the security service. The next day, over 50 Iraqis waiting to apply for jobs in the Iraqi military were killed in Baghdad by a suicide bomb.

In numerous interviews yesterday, Iraqis said they distrusted the motivations of US forces because their soldiers were no longer being killed in large numbers.Indeed, US forces are strikingly less visible on the streets than even two months ago. Kimmitt said yesterday that military officials were still determined to continue the transfer of security duties to Iraqi forces. But he disagreed with the growing perception that US forces have been staying off the tough streets, leaving the poorly trained, lightly armed Iraqi forces to cope alone.But by day's end, US officials acknowledged that the blasts were almost foretold. Kimmitt said that yesterday's well-knit operation was "very, very indicative of the modus we have seen" and that "the prime suspect would be Zarqawi." He cited a letter ostensibly written by Zarqawi, in which he advocates massive attacks against Iraq's religious groups to ignite civil war. The letter was found in January by Kurdish security officials when they arrested a Zarqawi associate in northern Iraq.