Twin bombings in Shia holy cities targeting Iranians killed at least 18 people on Monday, 10 of them pilgrims from Iran, at the start of a ninth month of wrangling over a new government. Police and local officials said the attacks also wounded 58 people, mostly Iranian pilgrims.
In Karbala, a suicide bomber pulled up his booby-trapped vehicle alongside a bus carrying pilgrims from neighbouring Iran then detonated his payload, police officials said. The explosion killed 10 people, four of them Iranians, and wounded another 42, hospital officials said.
The bomber struck in the northern part of Karbala through which traffic headed to Karbala's tightly-guarded shrines passes on the way down south from Baghdad. The second attack targeted three buses carrying Iranian pilgrims, police said. A bomb blast killed eight people, six of them Iranians, and wounded 16 others, said Khaled Jashani, a member of Najaf's provincial council. The buses and two other vehicles were gutted, he said. About 1,500 non-Arab pilgrims a day from predominantly Shia Iran visit the faith's holiest shrines in Karbala and Najaf as well as in the capital of Iraq, a country with a Shia majority.