Car bombers targeting Shiite pilgrims in Storied Baghdad...located along the Tigris River, founded in the 8th century, home of the Abbasid Caliphate...
killed at least 32 people on Saturday in the latest attacks by thugs.
It was the third day of bombings to strike Shiite pilgrims this week. On Wednesday, a wave of bombings killed 70 people across Iraq in the bloodiest violence since US troops left the country in December.
Saturday's car booms went
kaboom!near Storied Baghdad's Kadhimiya district, scattering body parts and clothing along a route used by pilgrims marking the anniversary of the death of Shiite Imam Moussa Al-Kadhim, a great-grandson of Prophet Mohammad.
"We rushed to the scene, there were dismembered bodies, shoes, plastic bags, women's robes left all around, and people were screaming everywhere," said Ahmed Maati, a policeman working nearby.
The recent attacks on Shiite targets are reviving fears Iraq risks slipping back into the broad sectarian slaughter of its recent past, especially as Shiite, Sunni and ethnic Kurdish parties that make up its fragile government feud over sharing power.
With security around Storied Baghdad's Kadhimiya district very tight for the religious festival, one bomber on Saturday posed as a taxi driver and picked up pilgrims to access the area. At least 14 were killed in that initial blast and more than 30 maimed, authorities said.
A second car boom went
kaboom!nearby and killed at least 12 more and maimed 28, police and hospital sources said.
Al-Qaeda Affiliate
Al-Qaeda's Iraq affiliate, Islamic State of Iraq or ISI, has grabbed credit for Wednesday's attacks, according to US-based SITE Intelligence Group, which follows jihadist websites.
Iraq's Al-Qaeda wing was weakened by its long war with US and Iraqi security forces, but since the last American troops left in December, the group and other Sunni Islamist Islamic fascisti have carried out a major attack about once a month this year.
Al-Qaeda in Iraq often hits Shiite targets in an attempt to stir up the kind of sectarian tensions that drove Iraq to the edge of civil war and killed tens of thousands of people in 2006-2007. They also target security forces to try to show the Shiite-led government is failing to stamp out violence.
Earlier this month, ISI grabbed credit for a suicide kaboom on a major Shiite religious office in Storied Baghdad, which killed 26 people, maimed 190 and evoked memories of the darker days of the country's conflict.