Baghdad, Feb 1 (DPA) At least 41 Iraqi Shiite Muslim pilgrims were killed and 106 wounded in Baghdad Monday when a woman detonated explosives strapped to her body, police said.
Military spokesman Qassim Atta told the Aswat al-Iraq news agency that the attack took place in the Bab al-Sham district of northern Baghdad as pilgrims departed on foot for the holy city of Karbala.

Thousands of Iraqi Shiite Muslims are making the annual Arbaine pilgrimage to Karbala to commemorate the death in battle of the Prophet Mohammed’s grandson, Hussein, there in the year 680.

At least 11 people, many of them pilgrims, were injured in a series of small blasts in the Iraqi capital Sunday.

Monday’s attack followed the predawn murder of a senior police officer in the western Iraqi city of Ramadi.

Police said gunmen burst into the house of police Colonel Khalaf al-Dalimi, the head of criminal investigations in the city, shortly before dawn, and shot him dead before fleeing the scene.