- BAGHDAD: A car bomb killed eight pilgrims Thursday on the road to one of Iraq’s holiest Shiite shrines, a highly sensitive site still being rebuilt after a 2006 attack that sheered off its gleaming golden dome and engulfed the country in years of sectarian bloodshed.
Women and children were among those killed in a group of pilgrims headed to the shrine in Samarra for Friday ceremonies.
Al-Askari mosque became the epicenter of Iraq’s worst violence. Sunni insurgents wearing uniforms set off two bombs in February 2006 that destroyed the site in a provocation that unleashed Shiite militiamen who hunted down Sunni clerics and attacked mosques in retaliation — the beginning of years of intensified bloodletting in Iraq.
Thursday’s attack took place about 10 miles, or 16 km, away on a road to the shrine from the town of Dujail.
The dead and wounded were left scattered around a scorched car.
“The wounded were running and asking to be taken to hospitals; children were crying in panic,” said a witness who identified himself only as Abu Jalal. “There was blood everywhere. The scene was disastrous.” The blast killed eight and wounded more than 40 people, said Dujail’s mayor, Amir Marhoun.
The Samarra shrine, about 95 km north of Baghdad, is still under reconstruction. Its dome has been rebuilt, but it’s not yet wrapped in gold.
