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Hilla, Iraq - Insurgents killed 149 Shi'ite pilgrims heading for the holy Iraqi city of Kerbala overnight, including 115 when two suicide bombers blew themselves up in one of the deadliest attacks of the four-year war.
The attacks, just over a year after the bombing of a Shi'ite shrine in the city of Samarra on Tuesday local time, are likely to increase sectarian tensions between majority Shi'ites and Sunni Arabs that are pushing the country to the brink of all-out civil war.
Two suicide bombers strapped with explosives detonated themselves almost simultaneously in a busy street lined with tents in the city of Hilla, south of Baghdad, killing 115 people, local hospital officials said.
The tents had been set up to offer food, drink and resting areas for pilgrims. At least 200 people were wounded in that attack, the hospital officials said.
"I saw one of the suicide bombers. He was about 40 years old. He blew himself up and I saw parts of bodies flying around," a witness, who declined to give his name, told Reuters.
Another witness described scenes of chaos, with sandals and tattered clothes lying among pools of blood and tents on fire.
"I watched the second bomber run into the crowd and blow himself up. Everyone around him was shredded to pieces," the witness told Reuters as he sobbed.
Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki blamed Sunni militants and supporters of former President Saddam Hussein for the "barbaric crime", according to a statement from his office.
US President George W. Bush insisted on Tuesday a new security plan in Baghdad was making gradual progress, despite the killing of nine US soldiers north of the capital in two separate bomb attacks on Monday.
More than 3185 American soldiers have died in Iraq since the US-led invasion in March 2003.
Defending his plans to deploy 21,500 more US troops to Iraq, Bush said in a speech to the American Legion veterans organisation: "The mission is America's mission and our failure would be America's failure."
Security in Hilla is tight for fear of a repetition of suicide bombings and attacks on Shi'ite religious rituals by suspected Sunni insurgents of the sort that killed 171 people in Baghdad and Kerbala in March 2004.
Insurgents also launched attacks on pilgrims in and around Baghdad, again defying Maliki's crackdown.
Among those attacks, a car bomb in the southern Baghdad district of Doura killed 12 people, police said.
Masses of Shi'ite pilgrims are heading to Kerbala on foot and by bus to commemorate Arbain, the end of a 40-day mourning period since Ashura, which marks the death of Prophet Mohammad's grandson in 680. Kerbala, one the holiest cities in Shi'ite Islam, lies 110km south of Baghdad. Hilla is nearby.
It is just over a year since the February 22 bombing of a Shi'ite shrine in the city of Samarra. That attack, blamed on Sunni al Qaeda, unleashed the wave of sectarian violence that threatens to tear Iraq apart.
US military commanders had warned that militants might launch assaults outside Baghdad, where more than 90,000 Iraqi and US troops have intensified operations to rein in violence.
The United States invaded Iraq in 2003, partly to end abuses committed by then-President Saddam Hussein.
But the State Department said in its annual report on human rights abuses that worsening sectarian violence and terrorism undercut any progress in human rights in Iraq.
"On one side, predominantly Sunni Arab groups such as al Qaeda in Iraq, irreconcilable remnants of the Baathist regime, and insurgents waging guerrilla warfare violently opposed the government and targeted Shi'a communities," the report said, adding the United States' own record was in question.
The report also highlighted the role of Shi'ite militias and security forces attached to some ministries "nominally allied with the government who committed torture and other abuses".
- REUTERS
