Bombs, bullets greet Shias on pilgrimage

Security forces, including US armoured reinforcements, girded for more bloodshed leading up to Monday's Shia holiday. And north of Baghdad, in the Sunni Triangle, a two-day-old operation involving 1,500 US and Iraqi troops swept through an area near Samarra in search of insurgents.

It was in Samarra that the insurgent bombing of a Shia shrine last month ignited days of violence between Shia and Sunni Muslims. More than 500 people died.

In fresh violence two US soldiers were killed by indirect fire in a base northwest of the central Iraqi city of Tikrit, the US military reported yesterday.

An "indirect fire attack" on Thursday killed the two soldiers and wounded a third, all members of the 101st Airborne Division, which is responsible for occupying the northern half of the country.

The deaths come as the 101st, together with Iraqi troops, are sweeping through a 100 square mile patch of agricultural land between Samarra and Tikrit in a major operation searching for insurgents.

Authorities had feared new attacks as tens of thousands of Shias, many dressed in black and carrying religious banners, converge on Karbala, 50 miles south of the capital, for Monday's 40th and final day of mourning for Imam Hussein, the Prophet Muhammad's grandson.

The US military announced this week it was dispatching a fresh battalion of the 2nd Brigade, 1st Armoured Division, about 700 troops, to Iraq from its base in Kuwait to provide extra security for Shia holy cities and Baghdad during this period.

Friday's bloodshed in Baghdad began as groups of faithful, many of them parents with children in tow, trekked down city streets headed for the southbound highway to Karbala.