KERBALA, Iraq, 15 April 2007 — A suicide car bomb killed 47 people near a revered Shiite shrine in Iraq’s pilgrimage city of Kerbala yesterday, exactly two months after troops launched a security crackdown in Baghdad. Another suicide attack killed 10 people in the capital, while other violence left 18 more people dead, pushing the death toll to 68 in the latest carnage to undermine the Iraqi-US security offensive as it headed into a third month.

The Kerbala bomb exploded in an area cluttered with market stalls around 200 meters from the Imam Hussein shrine, where hundreds of thousands of Shiite pilgrims flock every March during the Shiite Ashura commemorations.

City Gov. Akhil Khazali told state television that at least 47 people had died and dozens more were wounded, several hours after the blast ripped through crowds outside a bus station, car park and market stall complex. Women and children were among the casualties, and four Iranians were among the wounded at hospital on the second day of the Iraqi weekend.

Burned wreckage and charred metal littered the scene as civilians helped to ferry the wounded into ambulances. Shocked and dazed men wiped tears from their eyes, turning away from the bomb site that was engulfed in thick grey smoke. Khazali confirmed that an indefinite vehicle curfew had been imposed in the city, a magnet for Shiite faithful particularly at Ashura.

Television footage of the aftermath of the Kerbala explosion showed a distraught man cradling the charred body of a small child, while witnesses said the blast sent body parts flying into the air. Wailing ambulances rushed to the scene. “I suddenly heard a horrifying explosion. I had never expected that Kerbala would see an explosion of that size because it is a safe city,” said Ali Mussawi, 30, a store owner who was 50 meters from the blast site. Shortly afterward, Iraqi police fired into the air to disperse protesting crowds who blamed local authorities for failing to provide security.

Attacks at or near shrines are highly provocative. The bombing of a Shiite shrine in Samarra in February 2006 unleashed the sectarian violence that has pushed Iraq to the brink of civil war. Khaled Al-Rubaie, media director of Kerbala’s Al-Husseini hospital, said 47 people had been killed and 138 wounded, many of them women and children.

In Baghdad, a suicide bomber detonated his car next to a security checkpoint at the edge of the Jadiriyah bridge, killing 10 people and wounding 15, most of them civilians, a security official said. Eighteen more people were killed in other violence across the country yesterday.

Shortly after daybreak, gunmen attacked the home of top Sunni politician Adnan Al-Dulaimi and clashed with guards in a shootout that wounded six of the MP’s security retinue, a statement from Dulaimi’s political party said.

The bloody end to the Iraqi weekend came two days after a suicide bombing at Parliament’s cafe in Baghdad’s heavily guarded Green Zone stunned the world because of its massive breach of security.

Yesterday’s violence was the latest defiance to the crackdown launched exactly two months ago in Baghdad, where about 80,000 Iraqi and US troops are patrolling the capital. The crackdown has since been extended to other cities.

Nassar Al-Rubaie, a member of the political grouping of Moqtada Sadr, which bitterly opposes the US-led foreign presence, slammed the crackdown for failing to stop mass car bombings.

“On the ground, bombings are still continuing... Has the Mehdi Army ever been accused of these bombings? No. There should be pressure on those carrying out such bombings due to the wide dissemination of security troops,” he said.

In Shiite southern Iraq, where Sadr’s Mehdi Army has clashed with foreign troops in the past, British forces late on Friday fired at militiamen who were laying roadside bombs, and said they believed eight of them were killed.