BAGHDAD, March 2 (Xinhuanet) -- At least 182 people were killed on Tuesday in coordinated bombing attacks that targeted Shiite holy shrines in Baghdad and the southern city of Karbala as the Shiite Muslims celebrated the Ashura festival.     

    TALE OF TWO CITIES

    Some 70 people were killed and more than two hundred others wounded in at least three simultaneous blasts at the Kazimiya mosque in northern Baghdad on Tuesday, according to the US military.

    Thousands of Muslims had begun to enter the mosque to celebrate the Ashura festival when the explosions went off shortly after 10:00 a.m. (0700 GMT).

    A Xinhua correspondent saw one of the explosions taking place atthe gate of the shrine, sending brown smoke into the sky. At least eight bodies were taken out from the bombed ruins immediately afterthe blast.

    Two other loud bombings went off inside the mosque, said Imam Ali al-Wa'edh, the Shiite Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani's agent in Baghdad.

    He told Xinhua that there was a clash between US soldiers and Iraqi policemen before the explosions, and the bombers probably took advantage of the clash and sneaked into the crowd.

    Gunshots and mortar fire ensued the bombings, which sent the huge crowd to disperse in panic. A television footage later showed scraps of hand grenade found at the site.

    US army spokesman, Mark Kimmitt, said Iraqi police arrested a fourth suspect suicide bomber, who failed to detonated the explosive device.

    Almost at the same time, up to nine successive explosions burst out among the crowded people gathering at the Imam Hussein mosque and the Imam Abbas mosque in central Karbala, 100 km south of Baghdad.

    A total of 112 people were killed and 230 others were injured. It is reported that many of the killed and wounded were Iranian pilgrims, who thronged into the Shiite holy city in the past days.

    Kimmitt said the sophisticated attack consisted of one suicide bomber, several explosive devices planted along the avenue and lesseffective mortar rounds fired from outside the city.

    He said the US forces guarding around the city detained six suspects after the bombings, but did not disclose their nationality.

    Meanwhile, a loud explosion was heard in the Sadr City, a poor and crowded Shiite neighborhood in eastern Baghdad on Tuesday morning, but it was not known if there were some casualties.

    The apparently coordinated attacks came as the Shiite Muslims celebrated their holiest day marking the killing of Imam Hussein in 680 AD.

    The celebration would reach the climax on Tuesday morning, when worshipers should cut themselves until the wounds bleed to beg forgiveness from Imam Hussein.     

    ANGER AND CONDEMNATION

    Infuriated families of the victims blamed the violence on the US occupation and threatened to beat western journalists doing interviews in the hospital in Baghdad, said a Xinhua correspondent.

    Offering condolences to the relatives of the dead and wounded, the US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council (IGC) condemned the attacks as coward terrorist acts against the Iraqi unity.

    "It is evident that the plan of these attacks is to create a civil war and find themselves a stand hole in Iraq," said Adel Abdul Mehdi, an IGC spokesman.

    US and Iraqi officials also blamed Abu Mussab Zarqawi, an al-Qaida-linked Jordanian militant, for the tragedy, saying he seeks to spark a Sunni-Shiite civil war in Iraq to wreck US plans to handover power to the Iraqis on June 30.

    Last month, the US forces in Iraq disclosed that they found a letter attributed to Zarqawi, which indicated he and his collaborators were trying to provoke a sectarian war between different religious factions in Iraq.

    Citing the letter, Dan Senor, a spokesman for the US-led coalition provisional authority, said the key facilitator complained the failure of driving American forces out of Iraq and the process of "democracy" continued despite bomb attacks.

    Zarqawi, a Jordanian-born Palestinian long suspected of ties to the al-Qaida terror group, has been accused by US military officials of being behind a series of deadly bombings, including the one that killed Shiite top cleric Mohammed Baquir al-Hakim in another holy city of Najaf last summer.

    "The terrorists as Zarqawi and his coward colleagues will fail and we will stand unified," IGC member Samir Sumaidaie told reporters.

    Senor said the terrorists would "lose their pretext for more attacks" if the sovereignty is successfully handed over to Iraqis as planned in June.

    The IGC on Monday finalized the draft of the transition administrative law, or basic law, kicking off a first major step demanded by the US-sponsored power transfer timetable.

    Also on Tuesday, insurgents threw an improvised explosive device from a overpass at a US Humvee driving under it, killing one soldier and seriously wounded another.

    Kimmitt ruled out the possibility of any coordination between the attack and the bombings.

    The death brought to 379 the number of American soldiers killed by hostile fire in Iraq since the US-led war started last March.

    Assailants had previously wage effective attacks on such festivals as the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, the Eid al-Adha and the New Year day, in Iraq. Enditem