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At least 54 people have been killed and more than 100 injured in an attack by a suspected female suicide bomber in Baghdad, an interior ministry official has said.
The attack took place on Monday amid a procession by Shia who were on a pilgrimage to the southern city of Karbala, 80km southwest of the Iraqi capital.
Major-General Qassim Atta, the spokesman for the Baghdad operational command, said: "At 11.45am (0845 GMT), a woman wearing an explosives-filled belt blew herself up in the middle of a crowd of pilgrims going to Karbala."
Iraqi authorities lack enough policewomen to conduct searches at most checkpoints, and security forces have been reluctant to use bomb-sniffing dogs against people because of cultural sensitivities.
"We informed all checkpoints to be careful and to intensify the search procedures,'' Atta said.
Hundreds of thousands of worshippers, beating their heads and chests in ritual mourning, pour into Karbala for the rite, many walking for hundreds of kilometers.
Several hours later a roadside bomb in the district of Doura, in southern Baghdad, wounded 12 pilgrims, an interior ministry source said.
PHOTO CAPTION
Shiite pilgrims file into the city of Karbala, 80 kilometers (50 miles) south of Baghdad, Iraq, Monday, Feb. 1, 2010.
Al-Jazeera
