BAGHDAD — A passenger van packed with explosives blew up Friday at a bus station north of Baghdad where Shiite pilgrims had stopped for the night, killing four people and wounding dozens, U.S. and Iraqi officials said.
The blast happened a day after a female suicide bomber struck Shiite pilgrims traveling to Karbala for a major religious festival, killing at least 18 people and wounding 75.
Those attacks raised concern that extremists were seeking to re-ignite the firestorm of sectarian massacres that plunged Iraq to the brink of civil war two years ago before thousands of U.S. reinforcements were rushed to the country.
Hundreds of thousands of Shiites from throughout Iraq have been traveling by foot or by vehicle to Karbala, 50 miles south of Baghdad, for the religious festival.
U.S. and Iraqi officials said the blast occurred Friday evening at a bus terminal in Balad, a mostly Shiite town surrounded by Sunni villages about 50 miles north of the capital and near one of the major U.S. military bases.
The U.S. military said three people were killed and 48 wounded. The director of the Balad hospital, Qassim Hatam, said four people had died and 40 were injured.
Earlier Friday, a roadside bomb struck a minibus beginning the pilgrimage from Baghdad to Karbala, killing at least one passenger and wounding 10 others, a police official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to release the information. No group has claimed responsibility for the pilgrim attacks.
The Shiite festival, Shabaniyah, celebrates the birth of Mohammed al-Mahdi, the 12th Shiite imam, who disappeared in the ninth century. Devout Shiites call him the Hidden Imam and believe he will return to restore peace and harmony.
