IRAQ: A suicide bomber killed at least 35 people and wounded more than 120 yesterday near one of Shia Islam's holiest sites, the Imam Ali shrine in Najaf.
A Sunni insurgent group said it had carried out the attack, the bloodiest since July 18th, when 59 people were killed by a suicide bomb in nearby Kufa.
That bombing was claimed by al-Qaeda, which has attacked Shias in a bid to inflame sectarian passions and trigger full-scale civil war. Yesterday's bomb in Najaf appeared to have the same objective.
"God enabled your brothers of the Jamaat Jund al-Sahaba (Soldiers of the Prophet's Companions) to carry out an operation which took the lives of at least 30 rejectionists (Shias), including police," said a statement on an Islamic website. Its authenticity could not be verified.
Hospital sources said the Najaf bomber blew himself up at a police commando checkpoint on his way to the Imam Ali shrine. The defence ministry said 35 were killed and 122 injured. The dead, marked with numbered white labels on their foreheads, included police and civilians.
Six people were killed by a bomb in a restaurant in southern Baghdad, an Interior Ministry source said, while three police died in fighting with gunmen in the nearby district of Um al-Maalif.
A mortar bomb landed on a restaurant on the northern edge of Baghdad, killing at least three people and wounding five, police said.
About 6,000 additional Iraqis and 3,500 US soldiers from the 172nd Striker Brigade combat team are being deployed in the Baghdad area, and are expected to start systematically trying to clear neighbourhoods of militants and insurgents. The bodies of more than 1,800 victims of violence have been brought to the Baghdad morgue in July, the highest total since February.