Shia worshippers targeted as suicide attacks kill dozens

A car bomb was detonated alongside a crowd of Shia pilgrims in Karbala, south of Baghdad, killing at least 32 people and wounding more than 150, Iraqi police officials said.

It was the third deadly bombing this week as hundreds of thousands of Shia Muslims have been converging on the holy city.

And it came as Iraqi politicians argued over an effort to bar hundreds of candidates from running in the March 7 parliamentary elections because of suspected ties to Saddam Hussein's regime.

Two mortar rounds hit the same area after the car bomb exploded, an official said, adding the death toll was likely to rise.

Roads around Karbala, 50 miles south of Baghdad, have been clogged with worshippers trying to reach the city and the crowds made it difficult for ambulances to get to the wounded, a police spokesman said.

The attack in Karbala was just a short distance from where a motorcycle bomb exploded two days earlier, killing dozens. On Monday, a female suicide bomber killed at least 54 pilgrims in an attack just north of Baghdad.

In Karachi, Pakistan's second largest city, at least 22 people were killed and dozens hurt in two bomb attacks, one outside a hospital treating casualties from the first.

The first blast in Karachi targeted a bus carrying Shia Muslim worshippers, most of them women and children.

Officials said 12 people were killed and 49 injured. The bomb was attached to a motorcycle and detonated as the bus drove to a Shia procession.

Witness Imran Ahmad said the second bomb, which came two hours later, exploded outside the entrance to the emergency ward at Jinnah Hospital, which was packed with victims and relatives of those killed and wounded in the earlier attack.

Government spokesman Jamil Soomro said 10 people were killed and

several others were wounded.

Police chief Waseem Ahmad appealed to Shia Muslims in the city of more than 16 million to remain calm.