Agencies

BAGHDAD, 3 March 2004 — People screamed in rage and grief against extremists whom they blamed for the devastating suicide bombings.

They also vented their fury against US troops, who were pelted with stones near the Kazimiyah Mosque in the capital where the attack took place.

“Our borders are open. Terrorists come into the country like they’re walking through an open gate and this is the result,” said Abdallah Al-Tai.

Shocked women cloaked in black robes poured out of the cordoned off mosque, and witnesses said that a crowd had almost lynched television cameramen at the scene, thinking they had been linked to the explosions. Television pictures showed angry crowds hurling stones at US soldiers.

In the mayhem after the explosions, dazed pilgrims poured out of the mosque into the surrounding streets.

“The attack happened at about 10 a.m. just as visitors started to exit the mosque,” said Ismail, the guard.

One wall of the building was covered in blood and at the bottom of a flight of stairs in the center of the mosque were a pair of shoes and more blood — all that remained of one of the suicide bombers, according to Safa Ali, another guard.

Around the same time in Karbala, suicide bombings and a rocket attack tore men, women and children limb from limb. Many corpses were missing body parts or deeply blackened and yellowed from the heat of the blasts. A man’s scalp and ear lay on the ground alongside rotting fruit and a muddied pool of water.

Terrified and sobbing, many ran for safety. But hundreds of others continued with their religious duties, reciting prayers and performing the closing rituals of Ashoura.