Two roadside bombs went off Thursday in separate Baghdad locations, killing a Shiite pilgrim and a policeman and wounding 16 people, most of them Shiite pilgrims headed on foot to the holy city of Karbala for a major religious festival, police said.
The first bomb, in the southeastern district of Zafaraniyah, killed the policeman and wounded nine others — six pilgrims and three policemen, a police official said. The second, in the central Alwiya district, killed one pilgrim and wounded seven, all males in their late teens and early 20s, another police official said.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
The Shabaniyah festival, which climaxes over the weekend, marks the birth of Mohammed al-Mahdi, the 12th Shiite imam, who disappeared in the 9th century. Devout Shiites believe he will return to Earth to restore peace and harmony.
Shiite religious festivals have often been targeted by militants from al-Qaida in Iraq, the country's deadliest Sunni terror group.
Thousands of Shiite pilgrims have been killed since the ouster of Saddam Hussein's Sunni-led regime in 2003 when followers of Iraq's majority sect began to celebrate their religious holidays openly and in large numbers.
Shiite political parties are known to encourage huge turnouts for the festivals to display the sect's empowerment after years of marginalization by the minority Sunni Arabs.
The last deadly attack against Shiite pilgrims was last month, when three female suicide bombers struck Shiite pilgrims in nearly simultaneous bombings in Baghdad, killing at least 32 people and wounding more than 100.
The bombers were walking among pilgrims streaming in their annual march to the golden domed shrine of the eighth-century imam Moussa al-Kadhim in Kazimiyah.
On Thursday, Brig. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi, the chief military spokesman for Baghdad, issued several regulations designed to defuse sectarian tensions during the journey to Karbala, which runs through Sunni areas just south of the capital, and to avoid a repeat of past incidents that cost pilgrims' lives or provoked Sunnis during Shiite occasions.
The order banned members of the Shiite-dominated security forces deployed along the route from plastering their vehicles with religious and political symbols — like images of Shiite saints or Shiite party posters — and from joining pilgrims in their religious chants. Security personnel, al-Moussawi said, must stick to the national anthem and fly the national flag from their vehicles.
Al-Moussawi, who announced the regulations on state television, also said pilgrims must not carry arms and those traveling on foot mustn't walk about after dark. He warned against rumors that could sow panic and against accepting food from strangers.
In Karbala, 50 miles south of Baghdad, police spokesman Rahman Meshawi said additional police and army forces arrived in the city to beef up security for the Shabaniyah, which is expected to attract hundreds of thousands of pilgrims from across Iraq.
He said the additional forces were seven battalions — three each from the defense and interior ministries and one made up of security forces from neighboring provinces. He gave no figures, but Iraqi police and army battalions are usually around 300 men each.
Last year's Shabaniyah was marred by deadly clashes between gunmen loyal to two rival Shiite groups, leaving scores killed and wounded.
In other incidents Thursday, three policemen were killed and six others wounded when a roadside bomb hit their patrol near Buhriz, a town about 35 miles north of Baghdad in the turbulent Diyala province, according to the provincial joint operations center.
Farther north, in the city of Mosul, gunmen shot dead an off-duty policeman and army soldier in separate incidents.
