BAGHDAD — Suicide bombers, including at least three women, struck Shiite pilgrims in Baghdad and Kurdish protesters in the northern city of Kirkuk on Monday, killing at least 57 people — a brutal reminder that mass gatherings remain vulnerable despite vast improvements in security.
The attacks came even though the U.S. has stepped up efforts to recruit and train women for Iraq’s police force and enlist them to join Sunnis fighting al-Qaeda. Insurgents increasingly use female bombers because their billowing robes hide explosives, and they are less likely to be searched.
U.S. military figures show at least 27 female suicide bombings so far this year, compared with eight in all of 2007.
The three nearly simultaneous bombings in Baghdad undermined public confidence in recent security gains that have tamped down sectarian bloodshed. The attack in Kirkuk, 180 miles to the north, showed that ethnic rivalries can turn into mass slaughter in a city that is home to Kurds, Turkomen, Arabs and other minorities.
The U.S. military blamed al- Qaeda in Iraq for the Baghdad bombings. It was still investigating the Kirkuk attack, underscoring the more complicated nature of the tensions there.
In Baghdad, at least 32 people were killed and more than 100 were wounded, Iraqi police and hospital officials said. It was the deadliest attack in the capital since June 17, when a truck bombing killed 63 people in Hurriyah.
The Baghdad attacks began about 7:15 a.m., when three of the women detonated their explosives belts in quick succession less than half a mile apart.
The bombers were walking among pilgrims in the annual march to the golden domed shrine of the eighth-century Imam Moussa al-Kadhim. The shrine is the focus of a major Shiite festival this week.
Iraqi security forces had deployed about 200 women this week to search female pilgrims in Kazimiyah, but the attacks took place along the procession some 6 miles southeast of the shrine. There were too few women guards to search people in the procession.
The attack in Kirkuk killed at least 25 people and wounded 185, a police spokesman said. The bomber struck as Kurds were protesting a draft provincial elections law giving them less power in Kirkuk.
