Iraq bombers kill 43 as millions mark Shiite holiday

Attacks mostly against Shiites, including a suicide bombing that ripped through a religious procession, killed 43 people in Iraq today despite massive security deployed for one of the holiest days of their faith.
The bloodshed came as a flood of worshippers, including tens of thousands of foreign pilgrims, thronged the central shrine city of Karbala for the climax of Ashura, braving the repeated attacks by Sunni militants that have marred the festival in previous years.
The suicide bomber, who was disguised in a police uniform, struck in a Shiite-majority area of confessionally mixed Diyala province, north of Baghdad, killing 32 people and wounding 80, security and medical officials said.

It was the third attack of the day to target Shiites.
Earlier, coordinated blasts in the town of Hafriyah, south of the capital, killed nine people, while twin bombings in the northern oil city of Kirkuk wounded five.
A bombing also targeted an army patrol in a predominantly Sunni town north of Baghdad, killing two soldiers.

Shiites from Iraq and around the world mark Ashura, which this year climaxed today, by setting up procession tents where pilgrims gather and food is distributed to passers-by.
An estimated two million faithful gathered in Karbala, site of the mausoleum of Imam Hussein, grandson of the Prophet Mohammed, whose death in the city at the hands of soldiers of the caliph Yazid in 680 AD lies at the heart of Islam's sectarian divide.

To mark the occasion, modern-day Shiite devotees flood Hussein's mausoleum, demonstrating their ritual guilt and remorse for not defending him by beating their heads and chests and, in some cases, making incisions on their scalps with swords in ritual acts of self-flagellation.
Black-clad pilgrims packed the shrines of Hussein and his half-brother Abbas, listening over loudspeakers to the story of the battle in which Hussein was killed, as volunteers distributed food and water.
"I have been coming since I was young, every year, even during the time of the tyrant Saddam," said Abu Ali,a 35-year-old pilgrim visiting from the southern port city of Basra, referring to the rule of the now-executed Sunni Arab dictator who savagely repressed Iraq's Shiite majority community.