Three killed in Ashura procession in Baghdad (2nd Roundup)

Dec 25, 2009, 17:56 GMT

Baghdad - Three persons were killed in a bomb attack on a procession ahead of the Shiite Ashura festival Friday evening in Baghdad, the Voices of Iraq agency reported.

In the ongoing violence targeting Shiite Muslims, seven further persons were wounded when the explosive device went off, the agency said, citing security sources.

A few hours previously, an explosive device killed one civilian and wounded four others in eastern Baghdad.

Friday's violence followed the bloody toll on Thursday when 35 Shiites were killed in a spate of attacks around the country.

The Ashura festival marks the death of Hussein, the grandson of the Prophet Mohammed, in battle at Karbala in the year 680. Shiite pilgrims pay tribute in processions on the 10th day of the month of Muharrem.

Since the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, such processions in Iraq have become the repeated target of terrorist attacks.

Earlier, a member of a Kurdish Peshmerga militia was killed and at least 12 others were injured on Friday by a car bomb in the troubled northern Iraqi city of Mosul, police said.

Police told the German Press Agency dpa that the Peshmerga militiamen were patrolling the al-Rabia district of Mosul when the bomb exploded.

Mosul and its environs are among the most ethnically diverse areas of Iraq, and among the most violent. Despite successive security pushes that police say have netted hundreds of suspected insurgents, armed men continue to launch near-daily attacks in and around the city with deadly effect.

The Arab nationalist government that came to power in last January's provincial council elections has vowed to rid Mosul and villages to the east of the city of the Kurdish Peshmergas currently responsible for policing some areas.

Friday's car bombing in Mosul followed a rocket-propelled grenade attack on a police station in the western Baghdad suburb of Abu Ghraib.

Two policemen were injured in that attack, police there told dpa.

In further violence, six people were injured on Friday in clashes between Iraq's Christian and Shabak minorities near a church in the northern Iraqi town of Bartala, witnesses said.

Witnesses in Bartala, 40 kilometres north of Mosul, told dpa that fighting broke out between Shabak residents, who are Shiite Muslims, and Christians near the town's church after the Christmas service, following accusations that the Christians had torn down a poster of the Prophet Mohammed's grandson, Hussein, near the church.

Christians reportedly barricaded themselves in the church after the fighting broke out, but returned home after Iraqi security forces and Kurdish peshmerga militiamen, who share responsibility for policing the town, intervened to restore order.

Mosul and its environs are among the most ethnically and religiously diverse areas in Iraq, and among the most dangerous. Nearly seven years after the US-led invasion of the city, residents of all ethnicities continue to die in near-daily bombings and shootings in and around the city.

Late on Thursday night, a high-ranking member of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein's Baath Party was fatally shot in a suburb of Mosul, witnesses said.

Ahmed Kamel al-Badrani, a former officer in Hussein's feared military intelligence apparatus, was gunned down in front of his home in the western Mosul district of Amil, witnesses said.