KARBALA, Feb 12: A bomb attack killed eight pilgrims near a Karbala shrine on Thursday as hundreds of thousands of Shias converged on the central Iraqi holy city, medics and security officials said.

“There are eight dead and 56 wounded,” a doctor at the emergency services unit of Karbala general hospital said, adding that a child and three women were among the dead.

The security chief for Karbala, army General Uthman al-Ghanimi, earlier gave a death toll of five for the bombing near food stalls set up for the pilgrims in the city, 110 kilometres south of the capital.

An interior ministry source said a bomb placed in a gas pipe and triggered by remote control had been the cause.

“The explosion came as a result of a small, locally made bomb” in an alley leading to the Imam Hussein shrine, said Ghanimi.

“The bomb was made inside the Old City and did not come in (to Karbala) from outside. It wasn’t a failure of the security forces.” But a police officer said a suicide bomber had triggered the blast.

Hundreds of thousands of Shias are travelling from across Iraq to Karbala for Arbaeen, a ceremony to mark 40th day of Ashura mourning.

Thursday’s deaths came one day after deadly bombings near a Baghdad bus station shattered a relative lull in violence since largely peaceful provincial elections in Iraq on Jan 31.

The bus depot suicide bombings which killed 16 people came amid a string of incidents, including attacks in two areas of Baghdad which targeted Shia worshippers who were travelling on foot to the holy city.

One pilgrim was killed and 14 others wounded, security officials said.

Insurgents have targeted Karbala several times in the past six years since the US-led invasion. One blast 11 months ago at the same shrine killed 52 people.

On April 28 a year earlier, a suicide car bomb attack near the Imam Abbas shrine, a second revered shrine in the city, killed more than 70 people and wounded nearly 160.—AFP