Two blasts hit a Baghdad Shi’ite neighbourhood and a bus full of Iranian pilgrims yesterday, killing at least 13 people on the second day of the Islamic Eid al Adha religious festival.

Sunni Islamist insurgents and Al-Qaeda’s Iraq wing often target Shi’ites in an attempt to stir up the kind of sectarian tensions that dragged the country close to civil war in 2006-2007 though bombings and attacks have eased.

In one attack yesterday, a roadside bomb planted near an open-air market killed seven people, including three children at a playground. Another blast killed six people when it hit a bus carrying Iranian pilgrims to a Baghdad shrine, police and hospital officials said.

“We heard an explosion, we rushed out, I saw children running, some with wounds and crying. We evacuated some of the injured people. Mothers were running to the place to find their children,” said a witness, Abu Ahmed.

Police said the blast on the Iranian pilgrims came from a bomb that had been attached to their bus. It exploded around 300 metres from a police checkpoint, sending the bus out of control before it flipped over on its side. Insurgents have carried out at least one major attack a month since the last US troops left in December.