At Least 35 Dead After Suicide Attack at Shiite Site North of Baghdad

    An Iraqi woman grieves after a bomb killed more than 200 people in Baghdad in early July. (Hadi Mizban / AP)

Islamic State took responsibility for a triple suicide attack Thursday evening near a Shiite mausoleum north of Baghdad during Eid al-Fitr, the end of Ramadan. At least 35 people are dead and 60 wounded.

The Guardian reports:

The attack on the mausoleum of Sayyid Muhammad bin Ali al-Hadi reignited fears of an escalation of the sectarian strife between Iraq’s Shias and Sunnis.

The Shia form a majority in Iraq but Sunnis are predominant in northern and western provinces, including Salahuddin where the mausoleum is located.

Prominent Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr ordered his militia, the Peace Brigade, to deploy around the mausoleum near Balad, about 58 miles (93km) north of Baghdad. Sadr’s militia is also deployed in Samarra, a nearby city that houses the shrine of Imam Ali al-Hadi, the father of Sayid Mohammed whose mausoleum was targeted on Thursday.

The attack on the shrine was the first of its kind in recent years. Shia sites were frequently targeted by the forerunners to Isis, particularly when the organisation was run by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who incited sectarian war against Iraq’s majority sect through a spate of similar bombings.

—Posted by Alexander Reed Kelly.