Attacks kill Shi'ites, Rumsfeld visits Iraq

More than 20 people were killed in attacks on Shi'ite targets yesterday in violence apparently aimed at stoking sectarian hatred days before the climax of one of the holiest events in the Shi'ite calendar.

US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, on an unannounced visit to Iraq, warned it would take time for Iraqi security forces to crush the country's bloody insurgency.

Iraq's 60 per cent Shi'ite majority, oppressed for decades under Saddam Hussein, is expected to dominate Iraqi politics after last month's historic polls. Insurgents, most of whom are Sunni Muslim, have mounted repeated attacks on Shi'ites.

Mr Rumsfeld, the highest-ranking American to visit since the election, landed before dawn in Mosul, 390 km north of Baghdad. He told US soldiers the poll had been a good day for Iraq "but there are still challenges ahead".

Police said 13 people were killed and 40 wounded in Balad Ruz, northeast of Baghdad, when a suicide car bomb exploded outside a mosque. Four of the dead were soldiers and at least three wounded were children.

"I wish to lose my sight so that I won't see another person after you, my dear," cried one mourning woman in hospital.

The worshippers had been leaving a Shi'ite ceremony for Ashura, one of the most holy events in the Shi'ite calendar that pays homage to the martyrdom of Imam Hussein in 680 AD.

Al Qaeda's wing in Iraq claimed responsibility for the attack, but said its target had been a National Guard patrol, an Internet statement said.

"A lion from the martyrs' brigades of al Qaeda Organisation for Holy War in Iraq attacked a unit of the pagan guards as it was patrolling the city of Balad Ruz," the group led by Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi said in a statement posted on an Islamist website.

Iraq plans to seal its borders next week to prevent pilgrims from flooding the country for the Ashura ceremony's climax. Last year suicide bombers blew themselves up among crowds of pilgrims in Baghdad and Kerbala, killing 171.

In Baghdad, gunmen burst into a Shi'ite bakery, opening fire on workers and killing at least nine. The white walls, plastered with posters of Shi'ite clerics, were left smeared with blood.

In the west of the capital, a roadside bomb killed a US soldier, the military said in a statement.