The bombers targeted the mosque next to the tomb of Imam Mousa al-Kadhum in the Khadamiya neighborhood, where scores congregate each Friday morning for prayers.
A morgue official at the Khadamiyah Teaching Hospital said he counted 80 bodies but estimated the death toll could reach 100, because many of the bodies were dismembered. A reporter saw at least 50 bodies in one of two morgue rooms, alongside a pile of severed heads and other body parts in plastic bags.
The attacks came a day after two suicide bombers detonated explosives in Baghdad and Diyala Province, killing more than 80 people in what was the deadliest single day of attacks this year.
On Friday a senior MP claimed that Iraqi intelligence had found a link between former members of the Baathist regime of Saddam Hussein and recent bomb attacks.
Fryad Rawendozi, a member of the parliament’s security and defence committee said that information gathered by Iraqi intelligence proved that Baathists played the role of Al-Qaeda in launching suicide attacks in Iraq (photo).
“Intelligence information showed that al-Baath organisations occupied Al-Qaeda’s place in carrying out bombing attacks in Iraq,” Rawendozi told the news agency, Voices of Iraq.
He claimed that several suicide bombers were Baathists.
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