Woman suicide bomber kills 35 near Baghdad shrine

The religion of pieces practicing it's primary ritual on its own members:

BAGHDAD (AFP) — A female suicide bomber blew herself up near a Shiite holy shrine in north Baghdad on Sunday, killing at least 35 people including women, children and Iranian pilgrims, a security official said.

The woman carried out the attack at a checkpoint as pilgrims participating in Muharram ceremonies converged on the mausoleum of Imam Musa al-Kadhim in Kadhimiyah neighbourhood, the most important religious site in Baghdad for Shiite Muslims, the official said.

"A woman wearing an explosives belt blew herself up near one of the gates of the shrine," Major General Qassim Atta, Iraq's spokesman for security operations in Baghdad, told AFP.

Atta said 35 people were killed and 65 injured, most of them Iranian pilgrims and women and children. He described the force of the blast as "very big."

An interior ministry official put the death toll at 40, including 17 Iranian pilgrims, while the the US military, citing a casualty report from the prime minister's national operations centre, said 36 had been killed.

Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Hassan Ghashghavi condemned the attack on the Kadhimiyah shrine as a "terrorist and inhuman act" which "serves the objectives of the enemies of Islam and Muslims."

"Unfortunately foreign occupiers have revealed grounds for intensified insecurity at this recent stage by their wrong acts and approaches," Iran's state news agency IRNA quoted him as saying.

Police cordoned off the site and workers moved quickly to clean up the bloodstained street that was littered with broken glass and debris from the adjacent shops.

Sunday's attack came at about 11 am (0800 GMT) as pilgrims took part in the procession related to the Muharram ceremonies that climax on Ashura, the holiest day in the Shiite calendar which this year falls on January 7.

The commemoration mourns the killing of Imam Hussein by armies of the Sunni caliph Yazid in the year 680 and Shiite Muslim pilgrims from around the Middle East throng to Iraq to visit the nation's holy sites during Ashura.

Despite the chaos following Sunday's bombing, pilgrims continued to march on the shrine in Kadhimiyah, carrying out ritualistic wailing and devotional self-flagellation with chains as they walked.

The Ashura ceremonies across the country have in the past often been the target of attacks by Sunni insurgents.

Sunday's attack was the deadliest in Iraq since December 11 when at least 55 people were killed and 95 wounded in a suicide bombing at a restaurant outside the northern city of Kirkuk.