A suicide bomber killed at least 32 Iraqi pilgrims on Wednesday en route to a shrine and wounded 75, while a roadside bomb killed another six despite heavy security during a religious rite, security sources said. The suicide bombing took place just short of a bridge where 1,000 Shiites died in a stampede during the same event in 2005 after hearing rumors of a bomb. The attacker was wearing a belt full of explosives, a police source said. The roadside bomb in the western district of Harithiya, a mainly Sunni area that the Shiites walk through to get to the Imam Moussa Al-Kadhim shrine, killed six and wounded 30, an Interior Ministry said. Elsewhere, 12 more people died in sectarian violence. Hundreds of thousands of Shiites have been streaming through the streets of Baghdad to commemorate Al-Kadhim's death. Security officials assigned 200,000 police and soldiers to protect the pilgrims as they headed to the shrine in northern Baghdad. Iraqi military helicopters circled over the golden-domed shrine and snipers perched on nearby rooftops, using binoculars to scan the crowds below for signs of trouble. Sectarian tensions have been running high since the inconclusive March 7 election that Iraqis hoped would bring stable government to their nation more than seven years after Saddam Hussein's ouster.
