Five Dead in Iraq Bomb Attack on Iran Pilgrims

A car bomb targeting a bus carrying Iranian pilgrims north of Baghdad killed five people on Saturday, police and a doctor said, the second attack on Shiite Muslim faithful this week.

The bomb, which exploded on the highway from Balad to Samarra, also wounded 19 people, the sources said, adding that most of the casualties were Iranians.

It followed another car bomb against pilgrims travelling the same route on Monday that killed eight people and wounded at least 15.

In both cases, the pilgrims were on their way to a Shiite shrine in Samarra, which was bombed in February 2006, unleashing a wave of sectarian bloodletting in which tens of thousands of people died.

Iraq is home to some of the holiest sites in Shiite Islam and is visited by hundreds of thousands of foreign pilgrims each year, most of them from neighboring Iran.

Sunni militants in Iraq, including those linked to al-Qaida, frequently attack Shiites, whom they regard as apostates.