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BAGHDAD - Bombers killed 40 people in two attacks on majority Shi'ite worshippers marking the religious ritual of Ashura today amid heightened tensions between Iraq's Shi'ites and once politically dominant minority Sunnis.
Four more pilgrims were killed in an ambush in the capital on the final day of the week-long annual Ashura mourning rite, the highpoint of the Shi'ite religious calendar.
Also in Baghdad, mortars rained down on the mainly Sunni district of Adhamiya, killing 17 and wounding 72, a police source said.
Fearing a possible strike by insurgents, Iraqi authorities had deployed 11,000 police and soldiers to the holy Shi'ite city of Kerbala, focus of the commemoration that marks the death in battle of the Prophet Mohammed's grandson there 1,300 years ago.
The fears were fuelled by the discovery of what Iraqi officials said was a plot by a messianic Muslim cult to target senior Shi'ite clerics in the holy city of Najaf south of Baghdad at the climax of Ashura this week.
Iraqi security forces backed by US tanks, helicopters and jet fighters fought a fierce day-long battle with the "Soldiers of Heaven" near the city on Sunday in which one US helicopter crashed. Iraqi officials said the cult's leader was killed.
Iraqi Defence Ministry spokesman Mohammed al-Askari said on Tuesday the final toll from the battle was 263 killed. A total of 502 "Soldiers of Heaven" followers had been arrested, including 210 wounded.
Ashura has been a target in the past for radical Sunni militants who view the Shi'ite sect -- a majority in Iraq but a minority in the Islamic world -- as heretics.
Suicide bombings and other attacks on Ashura crowds in Kerbala and Baghdad killed 171 people in March 2004.
This time, the bombers appeared to have focused on less well-protected targets in other Iraqi towns.
In the first blast, 13 people were killed, including three women and a teenage boy, and 39 wounded when a roadside bomb hit a procession of Shi'ites in the town of Khanaqin northeast of Baghdad, police said.
Shortly afterwards, a suicide bomber blew himself up among worshippers outside a Shi'ite mosque in the town of Balad Ruz, about 80 km to the south of Khanaqin, killing 23 people and wounding 57, police said.
Gunmen also attacked two minibuses carrying pilgrims returning from Najaf in Baghdad's southwestern Bayaa district, killing four and wounding nine, police said.
Several barrages of mortars rained down on Adhamiya, a mainly Sunni district in northern Baghdad, killing 17 people and wounding 72, a police source said.
Tens of thousands of Iraqis have died in sectarian bloodletting between Shi'ites and Sunnis since an attack on a Shi'ite mosque in Samarra in February 2006, raising fears of all-out civil war.
But the battle with the Soldiers of Heaven added a new dimension to the conflict. Iraqi officials said the "ideologically perverted" group was led by a man claiming to be the Mahdi, a messiah-like figure in Islam.
Television footage shot on Monday and obtained by Reuters showed dozens of bodies lying in what appeared to be a dry irrigation canal that the fighters had used as a trench in their camp hidden in orchards outside Najaf.
Dozens of bullet casings and an empty AK-47 assault rifle lay near one man's body. A burnt-out pickup truck with a mounted machinegun was nearby. The footage also showed the bodies of several women and children.
An army officer in the 8th Iraqi Division said they had also found 1,000 copies of a book about the movement and its leader titled "The Judge of Heaven", and thousands of copies of a pamphlet entitled "The Holy Coming" at the camp, which was still sealed off by security forces on Tuesday.
Hundreds of thousands of Shi'ite pilgrims thronged the narrow alleyways of Kerbala to commemorate the death in battle in AD 680 of Imam Hussein, Mohammed's grandson, an event that entrenched the schism between Shi'ite Muslims and Sunnis.
Many waved green, red and black flags to symbolise their loyalty and mourning while others beat their chests to the sound of drums and religious chants.
"We are naturally worried by the threats of violence, but despite this being a sad occasion, I'm happy that we were able to commemorate this event peacefully," said pilgrim Hayder Mohammed as he sipped a small glass of tea.
- REUTERS
