Suicide attacks and car bombings aimed at mosques killed at least 27 Shi'ite Muslims in Iraq yesterday, raising fears of an outbreak of sectarian violence on the eve of the majority sect's most important religious ritual.
Violence in other areas brought the death toll to around 40, making it the country's bloodiest day since elections on January 30 shifted power to Shi'ites after decades of oppression under Saddam Hussein's Sunni-dominated regime.
Suicide bombings at two Shi'ite mosques in Baghdad killed at least 17 people, while a car bomb yesterday night exploded outside a Shi'ite mosque in the town of Iskandariya, south of Baghdad, killing seven and wounding 10, local hospital officials said.
In the first Baghdad suicide attack, a man wearing an explosives-packed vest merged into a crowd near a mosque in the southwest of the capital and blew himself up, survivors said. The blast killed 15 people and wounded 33, Yarmouk hospital said.
Soon afterwards, an explosion shook a second Shi'ite mosque in western Baghdad, the US military and police sources said.
Police said two suicide bombers had approached a crowd outside the mosque. They were spotted by police, who shot them, but one still blew himself up, killing at least two people.
Separately, a rocket landed near a police station and close to a mosque in a Shi'ite district of northwestern Baghdad, killing three people and wounding five, police said.
Iraq's national security adviser, Mowaffaq al-Rubaie, told CNN he believed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian militant who is al Qaeda's leader in Iraq, was behind the attacks. Zarqawi has claimed responsibility for many of Iraq's worst strikes. The attacks came as thousands of Shi'ites marched through the city for Ashura, a day after a Shi'ite alliance was confirmed as winner of last month's historic election, handing power for the first time to the long oppressed community.
A majority of Sunni Muslims abstained from the polls.
UN Security-General Kofi Annan condemned the attacks.
A suicide bomber also killed two policemen and a member of the Iraq National Guard in Baghdad, police said, and in Kirkuk, a blast killed a man at a Shi'ite-Turkman mosque.
Iraq's Electoral Commission announced on Thursday that the main Shi'ite coalition, the United Iraqi Alliance, had secured 140 seats in the assembly, just enough for a slim majority.
A Kurdish alliance came second and will have 75 seats, while a list headed by interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, a secular Shi'ite, will have 40. Sunni Arabs have fewer than 10 seats.
Talks have been going on for two weeks over who will take the top government positions, with the Kurds expected to get the presidency and the Shi'ite bloc the prime minister's post.
The front runner for premier is physician Ibrahim al- Jaafari, a religious Shi'ite and leader of the Dawa Party, but Ahmad Chalabi, another former exile and former Pentagon favourite, is also pushing his candidacy. Whoever ends up as prime minister faces the daunting task of improving security in a country plagued by violence.
Iraqi insurgents holding two Indonesian journalists hostage issued a videotape, demanding Indonesia say what the reporters were doing in Iraq.
Three US soldiers were killed in separate attacks in and near the northern city of Mosul on Thursday.
Two more died yesterday. One soldier was killed when an improvised explosive device exploded near Diwaniya. The other was killed by a bomb blast north of Baghdad, raising to at least 1,120 the number killed in action since March 2003.