140Killed, Hundreds Injured In Iraq’s Blasts

A series of blasts killed 85 people and wounded 240 in Karbala, south of the capital, the judge investigating the attacks, Ahmed Al-Hillali, told Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Iraqi Health Minister Khdeir Abbas said at least 54 were killed in Baghdad, 110 kilometers to the north while as many as 300 were wounded.

"I saw a man running into a group of Iranian pilgrims and exploding himself," Karbala police Captain Mahdi Ghanami told AFP.

"The bomb claimed 25 victims."

Iranian interior ministry spokesman Jahanbakhsh Khanjani told AFP that some 40 – 50Iranian pilgrims were killed or wounded in the simultaneous explosions in Karbala and Baghdad.

An AFP reporter saw at least 50 bodies piled up outside Karbala main hospital after a number of blasts rocked the sacred Shiite city.

Earlier, the Karbala police chief told Reuters that the series of blasts in the city killed at least 70 people.

"So far there are 70 dead, both Iraqis and Iranians," Colonel Raed Nabil said.

Police said rockets had fallen near one of the two holiest Shiite shrines in the city, while witnesses thought hidden bombs had exploded.

AFP correspondent counted at least five explosions and saw smoke rising from the areas of the Abbas and Al-Hussein shrines, where Shiites celebrated Ashura religious festival freely for the first time in decades.

A senior police officer, Major Chasb Jaburi, said four Iranians and one Iraqi had been arrested, but the Iranians would be released as they were not involved.

The Iraqi was still being investigated.

Shiites were mourning the killing of Prophet Muhammad’s grandson Imam Al-Hussein in 61 A.H. ( 680A.D.) in a battle near Karbala.

Imam Al-Hussein is buried in Karbala along with his half-brother Abbas.

Hundreds of thousands of Shiites from Iraq and other countries, including Iran, descended Monday, March1 , on Karbala to mark Ashura.

The blasts brought chaos to the city, as passers-by struggled to help the wounded, loading them onto wooden carts, into blankets or just picking up badly injured people dripping blood and running off with them for help.

The whole area had been sealed off to cars and the first ambulances to be seen arrived well after the blasts.

Karbala hotel owner Aziz Aziz Mazhat, who said he saw at least 20 bodies lying in the street below, raged against U.S. President George W. Bush.

"You came here to get rid of Saddam but you do not protect us," he said.

"What happened today is the start of civil war against everyone, including Americans, who wants to hurt Iraq ".

After the blasts near the Abbas mausoleum, an AFP correspondent saw crowds set on a man, kicking him senseless, punching him and throwing rocks at him, while shots were fired in the air.

Baghdad

In the capital, security guards said four suicide attackers blew themselves up at the Kazimiyah mosque in northwest Baghdad, while Kimmitt said three were involved.

"There were four suicide attackers. One blew himself up at the entrance of the mosque, the other in the heart of the building, and the other two at a side entrance," said Diya Ismail, one of the guards.

He said that he found a hand still clutching an unexploded grenade.

The health minister said that at least 58 people were killed and 128 people injured in the attack on Kazimyah mosque in a Shiite district in northwest Baghdad .

"I have visited four hospitals, there are 58 dead and 128 wounded but the toll may rise because more people are arriving," he told reporters.

Earlier reports said that at least 27 people, including one child and four women, were killed and almost 200 wounded in the attack.

"Until now we have received 27 bodies most of them with massive injuries to the head and abdomen," Abdallah Hatem, head of the morgue at the main Kazimyah hospital, told AFP.

He said many bodies had been taken directly to the morgue without passing through the main casualty centre.

There, emergency services head Dr Ahmed Zia told AFP: "Ten lifeless bodies have been transported to our facility."

He said some of the injured had been admitted, but that because of the sheer numbers other casualties were being sent to other hospitals in the city.

Ambulances raced to and from the scene while fire trucks and police were out in force. Two U.S. helicopters hovered overhead.

At Karhk hosiptal, where urgent calls were being made for blood donors, a nurse told AFP that no fewer than 70 people were being treated, some with serious injuries, while some 18 were accepted at the city medical centre.

Shocked women cloaked in black Shiite robes poured out of the mosque, which police had cordoned off, and witnesses said a crowd had almost lynched television cameramen at the scene, thinking they had been linked to the explosions.

More casualties, who included Iranian as well as Iraqi pilgrims, were being brought in all the time on stretchers, wrapped in blankets and dripping blood, in ambulances or private cars, followed by relatives.