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Anti-Shia attacks kill 23 in Baghdad

3 GIs killed in action, 2 Indonesian journalists missing

AFP, Baghdad
At least 23 people were killed and more than 40 wounded in three attacks against Shias in Baghdad yesterday while three US soldiers were killed in action in northern region as Iraq's majority community began a religious mourning period that last year saw the bloodiest attacks since the war.
The blasts, which wounded at least 42 others, occurred within two hours of each other as worshippers marked the first of two days of mourning in the Shia ceremony of Ashura, bringing back grim memories of the bloodbath that marred last year's commemoration.
The deadliest blast occurred at a Shia mosque in southern Baghdad,
killing 17 people, police and medics said.
"The attack was carried out by a suicide bomber wearing an explosives belt at the Kazimain mosque in Abu Dishr near Dura," a police officer said.
"I had just begun Friday prayers when an enormous explosion rocked the building," said the Dura mosque's imam, Sheikh Malek Kinani, who was also at the hospital.
Three other Iraqis, including a child, were killed and five wounded, when a mortar shell ripped through a cafe in the Baghdad neighbourhood of Shula, medical sources said.
Half an hour earlier, twin suicide bombers killed at least three people
at another Shia mosque in western Baghdad, a source at Yarmuk hospital said.
Shias were marking Tasua, the first of two days of mourning for the revered Imam Hussein which will culminate on Saturday with the religious festival of Ashura.
Hussein, grandson of the Prophet Mohammed and the third Imam in Shia Islam, was killed in 680 AD during the battle of Karbala.
During Ashura ceremonies last year, bombings in the holy Shia city of Karbala and in Baghdad killed more than 170 people, attacks which remain the deadliest since Saddam Hussein was toppled by US-led forces in April 2003.
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There was no immediate claim for the attacks but the Sunni-dominated insurgency had vowed to target the Shias who emerged as winners in Iraq's first democratic election in decades on January 30 and whose results were confirmed on Thursday.
Security sources said 12 Iraqis and a US soldier have died in other insurgent violence since Thursday evening, while two Indonesian journalists were missing and feared kidnapped while travelling on a notoriously dangerous road from Jordan to Baghdad.
The violence flared after clergy-backed Shia list was confirmed to have won a slim majority in the 275-seat National Assembly which will draw up a constitution for a postSaddam Iraq.
The United Iraqi Alliance, blessed by the Shia spiritual leader Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, won 140 seats in the parliament followed by 75 for the Kurdish parties and 40 for interim prime minister Iyad Allawi's list.
In Baghdad, thousands of Shias put on a show of force at a gathering in Baghdad to mark the start of the Ashura mourning period, while security was strengthened in the main Shia shrine cities of Karbal and Najaf.
Sayyed Abdelaziz Hakim, the black-turbaned cleric who heads the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), the main
party in the Shia list, addressed thousands of supporters before Friday prayers, at a gathering unthinkable two years ago.
He accused the police of having tortured to death three members of his party's officially disbanded militia, the Badr organisation.
Two Indonesian journalists were feared kidnapped by insurgents in western Iraq on Friday, disappearing from the notoriously dangerous road linking the Jordan and Iraqi capitals.
"The two journalists, who work for an Indonesian television station, were coming to Baghdad by road and disappeared in the region of Ramadi," a rebel hotspot west of the capital, said a security source at the embassy.
In Washington, newly released documents revealed further allegations of abuse of Iraqi detainees at the hands of US forces.
Meanwhile, a US soldier was killed Thursday in a roadside bomb blast in the northern Iraqi town of Tall Afar, the US military announced yesterday.
"One Task Force Freedom soldier was killed and one was wounded by an improvised explosive device while on patrol in Tall Afar yesterday," a statement said.
Earlier, the US military said a US soldier had been killed in action on Thursday in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul.