Iraq blasts kill Iranian pilgrims

At least 16 killed as attacks target Iranian religious tourists in capital Baghdad. Last Modified: 04 Dec 2010 10:42 GMT At least 16 Iranian pilgrims have been killed in a spate of attacks in Baghdad, the Iraqi capital, officials have said. Around 102 people were also wounded, an interior ministry official said on Saturday. In the deadliest attack, two near-simultaneous blasts - a derelict house laced with explosives and a car bomb - close to a rest house popular with Iranian religious tourists in Kadhimiya left five people dead and eight wounded, the official told AFP news agency. In the neighbourhood of Shola, a suicide bomber driving a vehicle packed with explosives rammed into a bus carrying Iranian religious tourists before detonating his payload. Two people were killed, and 28 were injured One person was also killed and 12 injured in the neighbourhood of Karada, where two bomb blasts took place. Attacks have also taken place in the Dora districts of Baghdad, as well as the Amiriya district where three people were wounded. Jane Arraf, a journalist reporting from Baghdad, told Al Jazeera that attacks on Shia Muslims usually take place outside of the capital, which makes the latest spate of attacks unusual. Continued violence The violence comes a day after 14 Iranian pilgrims were killed in an accident when two buses collided in southern Iraq, and 42 others were injured. That was out of an overall toll of 17 dead and 53 wounded. Every day, thousands of pilgrims, many of them from Iran and other countries with large Shia Muslim populations, visit the city of Najaf and Iraq's other major Shia shrines in Samarra, Karbala and Baghdad.