KARBALA / Aswat al-Iraq: Casualties from Karbala’s earlier two car bomb attacks on a checkpoint near the Karbala silo, south of the city, on Monday rose to 19 deaths and 47 wounded, a security source said.“One car bombt went off near a checkpoint while the other was in al-Hai al-Sinaie neighborhood, south of Karbalam which both left 19 people killed and 47 others wounded,” the source told Aswat al-Iraq news agency.
On Sunday, the provinceÂ’s police chief said more than 30,000 security personnel were deployed in nine intersections of Karbala within preparations for the Shiite pilgrimage of al-Ziyara al-Shaabaniya.
Meanwhile, the Karbala Operations Command (KOC) chief, General Othman al-Ghanimi, revealed during the press conference that intelligence reports referred to plans targeting pilgrims in Karbala from al-Anbar and northern Babel.
The al-Ziyara al-Shaabaniya, literally the mid-Shaaban visit, is a pilgrimage to revive the memory of the birth of the Messiah-like Imam al-Mahdi, the 12th holiest figure for Shiites Muslims. Karbala, with an estimated population of 572,300 people in 2003, is the capital of the province and is considered to be one of Shiite MuslimsÂ’ holiest cities.
At the center of the old city is al-Masjid al-Husseini, the tomb of Imam Hussein Ibn Ali, grandsone of the Prophet Muhammad by his daughter Fatima al-Zahraa and Ali Ibn Abi Taleb.
Imam HussienÂ’s tomb is a place of pilgrimage for many Shiite Muslims. Many elderly pilgrims travel there to await death, as they believe the tomb to be one of the gates to paradise. On April 14, 2007, a car bomb exploded about 200 meters from the shrine, killing 47 and wounding over 150.