Triple Bombing Kills 78 at Shiite Mosque

Three suicide bombers blew themselves up Friday in a coordinated attack against worshipers at an influential Shiite mosque in the Iraqi capital, killing at least 78 people and injuring 154.

The carnage left witnesses and relatives angry and shaken. Security forces vowed to avenge the deaths. The attack, which came soon after Friday prayers ended, was certain to further inflame tensions between Shiite Muslims, who now dominate Iraqi politics, and Sunnis, whose members form the core of Iraq’s insurgency.

Two of the suicide bombers were dressed in black abayas, women’s cloaks, officials said.

“The initial investigation suggests that women or a man dressing in women’s clothes was successful in reaching the checkpoint that searches women,” Sheik Jalaluddin Saghir, a member of parliament and imam of the Bratha Mosque, said in a television interview. “The explosion confused people, giving the opportunity to the other two terrorists to penetrate the security zone. One of them headed to my office.”

One mosque worker, pointing out a severed body part clad in pantyhose as that of an attacker, said, “There she is.” It was unclear whether the three attackers were included in the death toll.

Saghir said the attack was inspired by Sunni propaganda. A Sunni-backed newspaper had alleged that the mosque was being used as a detention center for Sunni prisoners, and that it held mass graves, he said.

At the scene of the bombing, armed members of the Shiite-dominated security forces angrily patrolled the streets, firing rounds of ammunition into the air and sounding sirens.

One old man cried and hit himself in the head. “This is just because we are Shiite!” he yelled. “We are killed everywhere. For nothing, just because we are Shiite!”

Witnesses described a scene of horror on a cool spring afternoon. Rescue workers, including Iraqi security forces and volunteers, sorted through the body parts to find and treat the living.

Ahmad Sebti, 37, a nurse who was injured in the attack, said he was leaving the mosque when the first explosion occurred. Screaming worshipers rushed back inside. He saw a man bleeding from the chest and had bent down to treat him when the second explosion went off, hitting him with a piece of shrapnel. The man with the chest wound died, Sebti said.

Security forces threw a cordon around the area as broken bodies were taken away on stretchers and wooden wheelbarrows. Over the mosque’s loudspeakers came repeated calls for blood donors.

Casualties were taken to several hospitals; some of the injured dragged themselves across the street to the Karkh Hospital, leaving trails of blood behind them.

At another facility, the Medical City Hospital, more than 150 patients filled the emergency room and the hallways. Men, women and children lay on beds and on the floor groaning and crying out in agony, their clothes ripped by shrapnel and fire, their bandages soaked red.

Doctors tried to keep order as staffers tried to mop up the blood. Blood covered the walls, the stretchers, doctors’ clothes.

Zahara Ali, 11, lay on a stretcher beside her wounded father, Ali Juhal Ali, her bloodied legs pocked by metal shards.

“As the preacher finished there was a big explosion, and then another,” Zahara said quietly. “Then I saw my brother wounded. We started running back inside and as I was crying out for my brother, there was another explosion.”

Juhal Ali, a Baghdad merchant, said his son and another younger daughter were at another hospital. He did not know the boy’s condition but believed his other daughter was not badly hurt.

“But I worry about her mind,” he said, lying back on his stretcher. “The explosion threw blood and flesh on her. If her body was wounded, she would be able to heal, but I’m afraid that her soul will be wounded by this forever.”

Juhal Ali and others blamed Americans for failing to prevent the attack.

“The Americans are preventing the police force from attacking the terrorists more forcefully. America is responsible,” one man said. “The police should attack the terrorists directly. And the Sunnis should not be allowed to protect the terrorists.”

U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad offered condolences to the victims.

“The United States condemns this cowardly act in the strongest possible terms,” he said.

He also warned that the nation’s fault lines were deepening, increasing the risk of all-out civil war.

Khalilzad urged Iraqis to exercise restraint and pledged that the United States would “do everything in its power” to help the Iraqi government capture those who planned the attack.

Shiite leaders also appealed for calm, arguing that the majority community has more to gain from a stable political situation. However, there were signs of differences among Shiites over what to do about the violence.

Salih Haydari, head of the Shiite Waqf endowment, demanded that the government “fulfill its obligations toward the people and not listen to those abominable voices that back up terrorists or provide help to them ....Patience is over.”

Saghir said Shiites would not “be dragged into sectarian” warfare, but he also accused Al Etisam newspaper, controlled by Sunni politician Adnan Dulaimi, of providing justification for the attack.

Reached by phone, Dulaimi disassociated himself from the accusations against the Bratha Mosque. “I don’t read the newspaper before they publish it,” he said. He said he had called Saghir to apologize for the accusations. “I told him that what was published is something we don’t agree with and something we don’t accept.”

Since the February bombing of the Shiite Golden Mosque in Samarra, sectarian killings have increased throughout Iraq. The attack on the Bratha Mosque occurred a day after a car bombing in the holy city of Najaf, home of the Shiite religious leader Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. At least 12 people were killed.

The attacks come during a prolonged crisis over the prime minister’s job and the formation of a new government. Interim Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari, a Shiite religious scholar, has refused to withdraw his nomination, despite calls from Kurds and Sunnis, as well as some Shiites. The Bratha Mosque is tied to the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the main party in the Shiite bloc. Its choice for prime minister lost the bloc’s nomination to Jafari by a single vote.

One of Jafari’s most steadfast supporters is the radical cleric Muqtada Sadr, whose private Al Mahdi militia would be a powerful weapon in any armed confrontation. Sadr said Friday that U.S. forces should withdraw from Iraqi cities and security should be turned over to Iraqis.

Officials of the U.S.-led military coalition consider the Iraqi army to be mostly nonsectarian. However, the Shiite-dominated police forces have been accused of organizing death squads to take revenge on opponents, primarily Sunnis.

Times staff writers Borzou Daragahi, Solomon Moore, Raheem Salman and Saif Hameed contributed to this report.