With Shia Muslims making up some 60 per cent of the population, were the bombings meant to ignite civil strife between Shia and Sunni?



Iraq's leaders have since called for national unity and insist that outsiders are to blame.



After the attacks the police are nervous - the ambulance drivers desperate.



Everyone's angry and frightened. Iraqis are taking it out on each other. Violence begets violence.



Today should have been a religious day, as Shia Muslims commemorate the death in battle of their historic leader Hussein.



That fight 1,400 years ago marked the split between the two branches of Islam - Sunni and Shia.



Iraq's leaders maintain that there's no real animosity between the two communities within Iraq so today's attacks must be the work of outsiders - they mean al Qaeda.



They're citing the letter from the al Qaeda operative al Zarqawi which the Americans intercepted last month and gave to the Iraqi Governing Council.



Al Qaeda are virulently anti-Shia. A website run by Jaiish Al Ansar - a Kurdish affiliate of Al Qaeda - has claimed responsibility for other bombings in Iraq. In recent days, they've published anti-Shia propaganda on the web.



The Shi'ite spiritual leader Ayatollah al Sistani has put out a statement blaming the Americans for failing to secure the country's borders.



No one, it seems, wants to acknowledge that the killers must have had at the very least Iraqi helpers.



Whoever did it, the aim is clear - to derail the American project in Iraq. Today just one American soldier was killed. But the dozens of Iraqi dead threaten the occupiers' ability to govern.



The multiple attack came just as the Iraqi Governing Council was to sign an interim constitution, part of the American process to hand over sovereignty in June.



Graphic images of today's killings have been broadcast across the Muslim world. At least 22 Iranian pilgrims were amongst the dead in Karbala. Iranian TV hinted that Mossad the Israeli secret service might be to blame.



Iraqi religious leaders interviewed all said it was unthinkable that Muslim could kill Muslim - even though Ashura commemorates just such internecine violence.