Special report: Tension escalates in Iraq

    BAGHDAD, Jan. 30 (Xinhua) -- A suicide bomber blew himself up among Shiite mourners marking the religious Ashura festival in a town northeast of Baghdad on Tuesday, killing 16 people and wounding 57 others, provincial police source said.

    "A suicide bomber wearing an explosive-belt blew himself up among Shiite mourners gathering near a mosque in Baladroz town, some 80 km north east of Baghdad," said the source from the media office of Diyala province in which the town located.

    In a similar incident, some 11 Shiite pilgrims were killed and 38 others wounded when a homemade bomb went off among a Shiite mourners' gathering at the center of Khanaqin, a town in the same province near the Iranian border, the source said earlier.

    In another incident, gunmen opened fire at two buses carrying Shiite pilgrims in the Baiyaa neighborhood in western Baghdad, killing four of them and wounding six others, police said.

    Shiite pilgrims gathered in many Iraqi cities performing rituals of Ashura, the holiest day on the Shiite Islamic calendar, which is a commemoration of the 7th-century death of Imam Hussein, grandson of the Prophet Muhammad.

    Ashura has been marred in the past by attacks by Sunni extremists which left scores dead.