Violence including an attack on Shia pilgrims in Baghdad has killed at least 73 people across Iraq, among them two journalists were gunned down in the north, officials said.
Violence is at a level unseen since 2008, and there are persistent fears that Iraq will relapse into the kind of intense Sunni-Shia bloodshed that peaked in 2006-2007 and killed tens of thousands of people.
Accounts differed as to whether the attack on the pilgrims in the Adhamiyah area of north Baghdad, which killed at least 49 people and wounded at least 75, was a bomb followed by a suicide bombing, or a suicide attack alone.
It came as pilgrims walked to a shrine to commemorate the death of Imam Mohammed al-Jawad, the ninth Shia imam, on Saturday. Iraq is home to some of the holiest sites in Shia Islam, and millions of pilgrims visit each year. But pilgrims are frequently targeted by Sunni militants including those linked to Al-Qaeda, who consider Shiites to be apostates.
Earlier on Saturday, gunmen killed two Iraqi journalists in the northern city of Mosul.
The Sharqiya TV channel said two of its journalists — correspondent Mohammed Karim al-Badrani and cameraman Mohammed Ghanem — were “assassinated” in Mosul. Police and a doctor confirmed the two journalists were shot dead.
Their reports on security forces in Mosul brought death threats from militants opposed to the Government, a Sharqiya journalist informed on conditions of anonymity. Iraq has come in for repeated criticism over limited media freedom.
“Many Iraqi journalists are routinely threatened, attacked and face difficulties in obtaining permission confiscation of equipment and so on,” media rights watchdog Reporters Without Borders informed. In Balad, a suicide bomber struck a cafe, killing 12 people and wounding 35, police and a doctor said.