At least 40 people were killed on Wednesday in Iraq, including 32 in a suicide bombing that targeted pilgrims commemorating a revered Shiite saint, Iraqi police said. According to the AP, police said the bloody suicide bombing that killed 32 and injured more than 90 people, took place Wednesday evening as Shiite pilgrims were about to cross a bridge leading to the a shrine in the Shiite Kazimiyah neighborhood where the seventh imam is buried.
The attack was carried out despite a vehicle ban in place across Kazimiyah, and 200,000 members of security forces deployed along the way to the shrine.
Also Wednesday, police and hospital officials said two pilgrims died and seven were wounded in eastern Baghdad when a mortar shell hit their procession. In western Baghdad, militants blew up the homes of Iraqi security officers, killing three family members.
Also in Abu Ghraib, an Iraqi soldier was killed and six were wounded when a suicide bomber drove an explosives-laden car into an army checkpoint. A bomb attached to a car of a police officer exploded in the same western Baghdad suburb, killing his mother and wounding his wife, police officials said.
In the neighborhood of Dora in southern Baghdad, a police major was killed when a bomb attached to his car detonated as he drove to work on Wednesday morning, police said.
