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Bombs kill 2 Iraqis on way to religious ceremony

BAGHDAD - ··A spate of bombings killed two Iraqi pilgrims Thursday as they headed to ceremonies to mark a Shia Muslim day of mourning.

Police said four bombs hidden in trash cans killed two people in a procession and wounded six in the town of Dujail, 50 miles (80 kilometers) miles north of Baghdad. The casualties were confirmed by Dr. Munthir Hussein of the Hussein hospital in Dujail.

Two more bombs were discovered and disarmed before they exploded, said a local police official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief the media.

Earlier, a roadside bomb wounded three pilgrims in the downtown Baghdad neighborhood of Karradah, police said.

Shia pilgrims from across Iraq are headed to the holy Shia city of Karbala for Ashoura, which marks the seventh century death of Imam Hussein in a killing that sealed Islam’s historic Sunni-Shia split. More than 1 million Shias are expected to converge on Karbala, south of Baghdad, for Ashoura’s peak on Friday.

Many of the pilgrims march on foot to Karbala, and are frequently targeted by Sunni insurgents who seek to re-ignite sectarian violence in Iraq.

In a separate attack, gunmen fatally shot a senior official in Iraq’s Education Ministry and his wife after blocking his car while they were driving in a Shia neighborhood in eastern Baghdad, city police and morgue officials said.