At least seventy-five people were killed when a Mosque in northern Baghdad was targeted.



And in Kerbala where two million Shi'ite Muslim pilgrims were celebrating the holy day of Ashoura a series of explosions went off killing another 70 people.



The blasts went off in the central pilgrimage area near the golden-domed shrine of Hussein.



The attack hit the most holiest of sites BOMB on the holiest of days. Witnesses counted up to seven blasts. More than two million pilgrims from Iraq, Iran and even further afield were here for a ceremony banned under Saddam Hussein.



They'd waited three decades and it had turned to bloodshed. Scores of people were killed, torn apart by the mortars and over one hundred were injured,

their limp bodies piled onto luggage barrows and wheeled away in search of help, the luckier ones into ambulances.



Many had feared an attack at this sacred time for Shi’ites, the 10th day of the Muslim month of Muharram. When in 680 AD the grandson of the Prophet Mohammed was slaughtered in battle.



Polish troops responsible for security in the district had sealed off the area in advance, they rejected Iraqi police claims that the blasts down to suicide bombers.



The leader of the Iraqi governing council who was on the streets before the explosions believed those responsible were trying to destabilise the transition of power in the country.



The attacks in Baghdad, four on the Khadimiya mosque, the city's holiest Shiite mosque, in the north of the city and another in the Korada district happened within minutes of those in Kerbala.



Again the streets had been filled with Shi’ite muslims attending their holy shrines. When the blasts cut through the crowds, the death toll was higher than Karbala. One hospital reported 75 bodies in the morgue.



Angry mobs hurled stones at US troops who later pulled into the square outside Kazimiya in Humvees and an armoured vehicle.



Crowds of enraged survivors swarmed nearby hospitals, some blaming Americans for stirring up religious tensions by launching the war, others blaming al-Qaida or Sunni extremists.