54 Shiite Muslim pilgrims killed in Baghdad suicide bombing

BAGHDAD — A female suicide bomber detonated a vest rigged with explosives among a crowd of Shiite Muslim pilgrims in northeastern Baghdad
on Monday, killing 54 and wounding 109, marking the latest in a string
of attacks that had unnerved the city ahead of pivotal national
elections in March.

The bomber hid the explosives under her voluminous
abaya, or black cloak, and detonated them among pilgrims gathered at a
hospitality tent in the neighborhood of Bab al-Shams. The dead included
five women employed to search female pilgrims for bombs, police said.

Taxi driver Ahmad Najem, 30, who
witnessed the attack as he drove nearby, described seeing a huge
fireball erupt from the tent, followed by the wails of injured pilgrims.

“I saw the bodies of women and children, and bags
and slippers strewn all around in pools of blood,” said Najem, who
joined in helping evacuate the wounded.

The pilgrims were among hundreds of thousands setting off to walk to the Shiite holy city of Karbala to mark the Arbayeen, or 40th, which commemorates the death of Imam Hussein, a seventh-century figure revered by Shiites.

Such public displays of Shiite religiosity were banned during Saddam Hussein’s time. Since his ouster in 2003, it has become customary for millions of
pilgrims to make the traditional journey on foot to Imam Hussein’s
shrine in Karbala.

It also has become customary for insurgents to
attack the pilgrims along the way, and Monday’s attack echoed one a
year earlier in which a suicide bomber killed 40 pilgrims, also at a
hospitality tent.

It was also the fifth suicide bombing in Baghdad in a week and underscored the seeming inability of Iraq’s security forces to prevent large-scale attacks, even as security conditions overall appear to have improved.

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