Iraq car bombs kill scores of Iranian pilgrims

Twin bombings in Iraq targeting Iranians killed at least 18 people on Monday, ten of them pilgrims from Iran visiting Shiite holy cities. This comes as the government officially announces a power sharing agreement, eight months after inconclusive elections.

Reuters

A suicide bomber detonated a booby-trapped vehicle in northern Karbala, alongside a bus carrying pilgrims from neighbouring Iran.

The explosion killed ten people, four of them Iranians, and wounded another 42, according to officials.

A second bomb blast in Najaf targeted three buses carrying Iranian pilgrims. Eight people were killed, six of them Iranians, said Khaled Jashani, a member of Najaf's provincial council.

About 1,500 non-Arab pilgrims from predominantly Shiite Iran visit the faith's holiest shrines in Karbala and Najaf each day, as well as in the capital.

The attacks came as political rivals - who have been at locked horns over a power-sharing agreement that has left the country without a government for eight months - met in the Kurdish city of Arbil, northern Iraq.

Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said last week that a surge of violence, including a hostage-taking by Al-Qaeda gunmen at a Baghdad church on 31 October, was due to the failure to form a government.

"The attacks….are due to the constitutional and political vacuum and the delay in the formation of the government, which gave the terrorists the opportunity to attack civilians," he said.