Bombing targets pilgrims in Iraq; 4 dead, dozens hurt

Hundreds of thousands of Shi'ites from throughout Iraq have been traveling by foot or by vehicle to Karbala, 50 miles south of Baghdad, for the religious festival.

US and Iraqi officials said the blast occurred yesterday evening at a bus terminal in Balad, a mostly Shi'ite town surrounded by Sunni villages about 50 miles north of the capital near one of the major US military bases.

The US military said three people were killed and 48 wounded. The director of the Balad hospital, Qassim Hatam, said four people had died and 40 were injured.

Balad has been relatively free from major attacks since May, and the US military said nearly 600 former insurgents in the area had agreed to stop fighting and cooperate with the United States and its Iraqi partners.

Earlier yesterday, a roadside bomb struck a minibus beginning the pilgrimage from Baghdad to Karbala, killing at least one passenger and wounding 10 others, a police official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to release the information.

In a separate development, a review of intelligence gleaned from captured militia fighters and other sources has revealed that Iraqi Shi'ite assassination teams are being trained in at least four locations in Iran by Tehran's elite Quds force and Lebanese Hezbollah. The intelligence also indicates that the squads are planning to return to Iraq in the next few months to kill specific Iraqi officials as well as US and Iraqi troops. A senior US military intelligence officer in Baghdad described the information Thursday in an interview with the Associated Press. He spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence.

The officer has provided Iraq's national security adviser with several lists of the assassination teams' expected targets. He said the targets include many judges but would not otherwise identify them. Iraq's intelligence service is planning operations to determine where and when the special group fighters will enter the country and is to provide an assessment to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

Also yesterday, the US military reported the deaths of two more service members - a Marine in combat the day before west of Baghdad and a soldier who died yesterday of "nonbattle related causes" in the capital.

Those deaths raised to at least 4,143 the number of US military personnel who have died in the Iraq war since it began in March 2003, according to a count by the Associated Press.