Blasts in Baghdad kill at least 12

BAGHDAD - Bombs struck Shiite pilgrims heading yesterday to religious ceremonies, killing at least 12 people and wounding more than 40, officials said. Fearing sectarian tension, a U.N. official urged Iraqis not to respond to the "provocations of extremists."

The deadliest blast occurred near a bus station and outdoor market in the southwestern Baghdad neighborhood of Bayaa, where pilgrims were preparing to board buses for annual Shiite rituals south of the capital.

An Iraqi military spokesman, Maj. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi, said 10 people were killed and 32 wounded in a single blast, from a bomb hidden in a small truck loaded with fruits and vegetables.

An Interior Ministry official said 17 were killed by two bombs at the market. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not supposed to give information to media.

It was not possible to reconcile the difference conclusively, and police kept journalists away from the bombing site.

Witnesses said a blast demolished several nearby vehicles, setting them ablaze. It was possible the initial blast triggered explosions in some vehicles, leading witnesses to believe there were multiple bombs.

Hours before the Bayaa blast, a car bomb exploded near a minibus packed with Shiite pilgrims in western Baghdad, killing two people and wounding 12, police said.

Hundreds of thousands of Shiite pilgrims are expected to gather Monday in Karbala, 50 miles south of Baghdad, to mark the end of 40 days of mourning that follow Ashoura, the anniversary of the seventh-century death of Prophet Muhammad's grandson Hussein.

The Iraqi military has deployed about 40,000 troops to protect the pilgrims against Sunni extremists, including al-Qaeda in Iraq, who have often targeted Shiites during religious ceremonies since Saddam Hussein's Sunni-dominated regime fell in 2003.

Such attacks helped trigger the wave of Sunni-Shiite bloodletting that nearly plunged Iraq into full-scale civil war until the U.S. troop surge of 2007 helped tamp down the violence.

Although sectarian slaughter has abated, U.S. and Iraqi officials are keenly aware that brutal attacks against civilians of either Islamic sect could trigger another bloody round of reprisal killings.

Mindful of that risk, the U.N. special representative in Iraq, Staffan de Mistura, condemned the pilgrim attacks as "murderous" acts that were "clearly designed to provoke sectarian tensions."

He called on all Iraqis "to not rise to the provocations of extremists" and take revenge on civilians of the rival sect.

Also yesterday, a suicide car bomber attacked a joint U.S.-Iraqi patrol in Mosul, killing an Iraqi soldier and wounding another, a U.S. military spokesman, Maj. Jose A. Lopez, said. Four other Iraqi troops were killed in two separate attacks yesterday in Mosul, which U.S. officials describe as al-Qaeda in Iraq's last major urban stronghold.