Female bomber kills 32 on Iraqi pilgrimage route
86 injured in attack on crowd of women and children
A female suicide bomber killed 32 people and wounded 86 others south of Baghdad on Friday when she blew herself up on a major Shiite pilgrimage route, police said.
The attack in Iskandariya, 40 km (25 miles) south of the capital, came a day after a bomb killed eight people in the southerly Shiite holy city of Kerbala.
Captain Mohammed al-Awadi of the police force in the capital of the nearby town of Hilla said most of those killed were women and children.
He said the suicide bomber had hidden her explosives under an abaya, the traditional head-to-toe black garment, and blew herself up among a crowd of women and children just after midday (0900 GMT).
Religious pilgrimage
Hundreds of thousands of pilgrims are heading to Kerbala to mark Arbain, one of the most important dates for religious Shiites.
The Arbain rite marks the end of a mourning period after the anniversary of the death in the seventh century of the Prophet Muhammad's grandson Imam Hussein.
The attacks occurred despite heavy security on the pilgrimage route.
A sharp drop in the violence that swept Iraq after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion helped allies of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki score extensive victories in Iraq's Shiite south in a provincial election last month.
In related news, an Iraqi army general and his son were found shot dead at their apartment in a mainly Sunni Muslim district of Baghdad, interior and defense ministry officials said.
They said Thamer Yussef and his son were killed at their home in Ghazaliyah, in an attack apparently carried out after midnight.