BAGHDAD — Bomb blasts ripped into throngs of religious pilgrims Monday as they streamed through Iraq’s streets to honor one of the most sacred holidays of Shiite Islam, in what has become almost an annual spilling of blood and stirring of sectarian anger.
At least 20 people — many of them women and children — were killed in three bomb blasts about 50 miles south of Baghdad, security officials and hospital officials said. Dozens more were wounded.
In the capital, another three explosions in heavily Shiite neighborhoods left three people dead and nearly 20 wounded, police officials said.
The attacks came as hundreds of thousands of worshipers flocked to the holy city of Karbala to celebrate Ashura, which commemorates the death of a foundational figure in Shiite Islam more than 1,000 years ago.
The holiday, suppressed under dictator Saddam Hussein, has become a touchstone of sectarian identity for Iraq’s Shiite majority since the U.S. invasion in 2003. The New York Times
