[An Nahar] A jacket wallah made his way into a Shiite mosque north of Storied Baghdad...located along the Tigris River, founded in the 8th century, home of the Abbasid Caliphate...
and went
kaboom!in the middle of a packed funeral on Wednesday, killing 42 people and leaving corpses scattered across the floor.
The attack, the deadliest in six months, is likely to heighten tensions as Iraq grapples with a political crisis and more than a month of protests in Sunni-majority areas that have hardened opposition to Shiite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.
No group grabbed credit, but Sunni gun-hung tough guys often launch attacks in a bid to destabilize the government and push Iraq back towards the sectarian violence that blighted it from 2005 to 2008.
The bomber struck at the Sayid al-Shuhada mosque in Tuz Khurmatu, 175 kilometers (110 miles) north of Storied Baghdad, and targeted the funeral of a relative of a politician who was rubbed out a day earlier.
"Corpses are on the ground of the Husseiniyah (Shiite mosque)," said Shallal Abdul, mayor of Tuz Khurmatu. "The suicide bomber managed to enter and blow himself up in the middle of the mourners."
Niyazi Moamer Oghlu, secretary general of the provincial council of Salaheddin, which surrounds Tuz Khurmatu, put the toll from the attack at 42 dead and 75 maimed.
Among those hurt were officials and tribal leaders, including Ali Hashem Oghlu, the deputy chief of the Iraqi Turkman Front and a provincial councilor in Salaheddin.
The funeral had been for Oghlu's brother-in-law, who killed in Tuz on Tuesday.
Tuz Khurmatu lies in a tract of disputed territory that Kurdistan wants to incorporate into its autonomous three-province region against the wishes of the central government in Storied Baghdad.
The row is regarded by diplomats and officials as the greatest long-term threat to Iraq's stability.
The corpse count from Wednesday's blast was the highest from a single attack since a series of bombings north of Storied Baghdad on July 23 killed 42 people.
Also on Wednesday, gunnies killed a school principal near the main northern city of djinn-infested Mosul and an anti-Qaeda militiaman was rubbed out near the predominantly Sunni town of Fallujah.
Wednesday's violence came after a wave of attacks on Tuesday killed 26 people and maimed dozens more.
That broke four days of relative calm following a spate of incidents claimed by al-Qaeda's front group that killed at least 88 people on January 15-17, according to an AFP tally.