By Bobby Rajabi
Impunity Watch Reporter, Middle East
HILLA, Iraq – A string of bombings in Iraq on December 24 have killed more than thirty four people. The bombs also injured over one hundred people. Among the bombings was a double explosion in the central Iraqi town of Hilla. Additionally there as a bombing in Sadr City, a predominantly Shi’ite district in Baghdad.
The bombings came three days before the climax of Ashura, when hundreds of thousands of pilgrims converge on Kerbala to mourn the killing of the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson, Imam Hussein. The forty day mourning period commemorates this 680AD event that sealed the split between Sunni and Shi’ite. Most of the individuals killed by the bombings were Shi’ite pilgrims attending mourning ceremonies.
The two bombs in Hilla, the capital of Babil province, targeted Shi’ite pilgrims who gathered at a bus station to mark Ashura. The first bomb was in a car and exploded at 2pm. The second bomb came fifteen minutes later when police had arrived. According to Fadel Hassa, an eyewitness, “police came to disarm a bomb some twenty meters from the site of the first attack, and it exploded as they arrived, causing numerous injuries among passersby and the police.
The bomb in Sadr City appeared to target a funeral procession. The attack killed at least nine people and injured thirty three. The bomb went off in a tent where mourners were gathered. According to Ahmed Rushdi, a journalist in Baghdad, “they were not by the hand of al Qaeda – they were not suicide bombers, but mostly car bombs and bombs besides cars.”
Another bomb in Baghdad went off in the eastern district of Zafraniya, south of the city center, and killed three people. The Zafraniya bombing injured twenty people and was located near the area where a preliminary Ashura ceremony was taking place. Additionally, a bomb blast in the Shi’ite sacred city of Karbala, about one hundred kilometers south of Baghdad, killed two people and injured four others.
More than twenty five thousand security forces have been assigned by the Iraqi government to protect the Shi’ite pilgrims during the celebrations for Ashura.
For more information, please see:
AFP – Iraq Attacks Kill Scores on Eve of Christmas, Ashura – 24 December 2009
Al Jazeera – Scores Killed in Iraq Blasts – 24 December 2009
BBC – Iraq Bomb Explosions Leave 23 People Dead – 24 December 2009
Guardian – Iraq Sectarian Bomb Attacks Kills 26 – 24 December 2009
