Pilgrims killed in Iraq bombings

Twin bombings targeting Iranian pilgrims have killed at least 13 people in Iraq's holy Shia cities of Karbala and Najaf. In the first attack a bus carrying pilgrims was hit by a bomb explosion in Touirij town near Karbala in central Iraq, killing at least 10 people and injuring another 38 on Monday. In the second incident, a car bomb exploded near buses transporting Iranian pilgrims in the city of Najaf, killing at least three people and wounding 10 others. The revered Imam Ali shrine in Najaf attracts hundreds of thousands of Shia Muslims from Iraq, Iran and other countries every year. According to officials, the first explosion occurred at a parking lot in the northern part of the Karbala. "It was a suicide bomber who drove up against a bus carrying Iranian pilgrims and detonated the explosives," a police official told AFP news agency. The explosion wounded another 38 people, most of them Iranians, hospital officials said. Mohammed al-Moussawi, head of the Kerbala provincial council, said that the Iranian pilgrims were the targets of the attack. Some 1,500 pilgrims from neighbouring Iran visit Shia shrines in Iraq a day, mainly in the holy cities of Najaf and Karbala.