Female suicide bombers kill 57, wound dozens

updated 5:20 p.m. ET July 28, 2008

BAGHDAD - Suicide bombers struck a Shiite pilgrimage in Baghdad and a Kurdish protest rally in northern Iraq on Monday, killing at least 57 people and wounding nearly 300, police said.

Three female suicide bombers blew their explosive vests in the middle of pilgrims in Baghdad, moments after a roadside bomb attack, killing at least 32 people and wounding 102, Iraqi officials said.

In the oil-rich northern city of Kirkuk, 25 people were killed and 185 wounded when a blast tore through a crowd of Kurds protesting a draft provincial elections law, officials said.

Local police said remains recovered from the scene showed the attacker was a woman. The U.S. military confirmed a suicide bombing but said there was no indication the attacker was a woman.

Blow to confidence
The bombings were a devastating blow to the Iraqi public's growing confidence of recent security gains that have seen violence in Iraq drop to its lowest levels in more than four years.

A senior U.S. military official blamed al-Qaida in Iraq for the attacks in Baghdad. The attacks come ahead of U.S. and Iraqi military operations in early August aimed at routing out insurgents from rural hideouts in northern Iraq and solidify recent security gains in urban areas.

"At about 8 a.m. three female suicide bombers detonated themselves among pilgrims heading to Kazimiyah," the main Iraqi military spokesman in Baghdad, Brig. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi, said in a statement posted on his Web site.

Video   Iraqi women rise against female bombers July 27: Violence in Iraq may be down overall, but attacks carried out by women are on the rise, prompting women in Iraqi neighborhoods to take some tough action of their own. NBC’s Ned Colt reports. Nightly News

The pilgrims are marking the death of an eighth-century saint. The attacks took place in the mainly Shiite Karradah district, which is several miles away from the destination of the pilgrimage in Kazimiyah in northern Baghdad. Most of the dead were women and children, police and health officials said.

"I heard women and children crying and shouting and I saw burned women as dead bodies lied in pools of blood on the street," Mustapha Abdullah, a 32-year-old man who was injured in the stomach and legs, said from the hospital where he was being treated.

It was the deadliest attack in Baghdad since June 17, when a truck bombing killed 63 people in Hurriyah, a neighborhood that saw some of the worst Shiite-Sunni slaughter in 2006.

Power-sharing tension
In Kirkuk, the suicide bomber targeted Kurdish demonstrators who were protesting a provincial elections measure blocked in parliament because of disagreement over a power-sharing formula in the disputed city of Kirkuk, an oil-rich area.

Maj. Gen. Jamal Tahir, a Kirkuk police spokesman, said police found a car bomb nearby and detonated it safely.

After the suicide explosion, dozens of angry Kurds opened fire on the offices of a Turkomen political party, which opposes Kurdish claims on Kirkuk.

A police official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media, said no one was hurt in the attack and that the party offices were placed under police protection.

Suicide bombings are increasingly carried out by women, who are more easily able to hide explosives under their all-encompassing black Islamic robes, or abayas, and often are not searched at checkpoints.

Women searching women
But security forces have deployed about 200 women this week to search female pilgrims near Kazimiyah, where the Shiite saint Imam Moussa al-Kadhim is buried in a golden domed shrine.

Since the 2003 ouster of Saddam Hussein, who was a Sunni, Shiite political parties have encouraged huge turnouts at religious festivals to display the majority sect's power in Iraq. Sunni religious extremists have often targeted the gatherings to foment sectarian war, but that has not stopped the Shiites.

In 2005, at least 1,000 people also were killed in a bridge stampede caused by rumors of a suicide bomber in Baghdad during the Kazimiyah pilgrimage.

Elsewhere, a roadside bomb attack on Monday killed four civilians near Balad Ruz, 45 miles northeast of Baghdad, police said.

More from msnbc.com Power struggle threatens Pakistan’s leader  Swine flu booster shots? Good luck with that From Levi to Letterman: Palin's rough year Obama gets mixed reviews on China's blogs Ice addict heads for poles, Everest | Trek posts On Twitter: Breaking news updates | Weird and wild

MORE FROM MIDEAST & N. AFRICA

Mideast & N. Africa Section Front

Carter defends handling of Iran hostage crisis U.N.: Iran nuclear facility to start in 2011 Saudi cleric accuses Iran of ties to Yemeni rebels Bingo’s comeback erases divisions in Baghdad Mideast & N. Africa Section Front   Add Mideast & N. Africa headlines to your news reader: