Dozens Killed In Iraq Blasts

In another violent incident, at least 10 people were killed and some 100 wounded Tuesday in what appeared to be a rocket attack on a Shiite mosque in northwest Baghdad, a doctor treating the casualties told Agence France-Presse (AFP).

In the Karbala explosions, an AFP reporter saw at least 30 bodies piled up outside the hospital in Karbala.

More casualties were being brought in all the time on stretchers, wrapped in blankets, in ambulances or private cars.

The injured included a boy aged around five, with his face charred.

The bodies were lying in a heap in front of the entrance of the hospital. Some were decapitated or otherwise mutilated.

Meanwhile, and according to the Associated Press news agency, three explosions rocked the inside and outside of the Kazimiya shrine in Baghdad at about the same time.

Police sealed off the area while panicked people fled screaming and ambulances raced to the scene. Dozens of armed men in civilian clothes tried to maintain order, AP reported.

Karbala, known as the city of peace, was on knife’s edge as U.S.-appointed police and Shiites feared a major attack during the holy event, which marks the anniversary of the killing of Prophet Muhammad’s grandson Al-Hussein in 61 A.H. (680 A.D.).

As Shiites from far-flung locations in Pakistan, Iran and eastern Asia paraded in the streets in front of the two towering gold-domed mosques where Al-Hussein and his half-brother Abbas are buried, security teams cordoned off the area around the holy shrines, checking bags and identification.