Suicide bombers killed at least 17 people in attacks on two Shi'ite mosques in Baghdad Friday as thousands of Shi'ites -- Iraq's majority Muslim sect -- commemorated Ashura, the main event in their religious calendar.
Separately, a rocket landed near a police station and close to a mosque in a Shi'ite district of northwestern Baghdad killing three people and wounding five in a shop, police said.
In the first suicide attack, a man wearing an explosives- packed vest merged into a crowd near a mosque in the Doura area of southwestern Baghdad and blew himself up, survivors said. The blast killed 15 people and wounded 33, Yarmouk hospital said.
Soon afterwards, an explosion shook a second Shi'ite mosque in western Baghdad, the U.S. military and police sources said.
Police initially blamed that blast on a mortar strike but later said two suicide bombers had approached a crowd outside the mosque. They were spotted by police, who shot them, but one still blew himself up, killing at least two people, police said.
Iraq's national security adviser, Mowaffaq al-Rubaie, told CNN he believed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian militant who is al Qaeda's leader in Iraq, was behind the attacks. Zarqawi has claimed responsibility for many of Iraq's worst strikes.
The attacks came as thousands of Shi'ites marched through the city for Ashura in a show of strength a day after a Shi'ite alliance was confirmed as the winner of last month's historic election, handing the community power for the first time.
Friday's attacks recalled Ashura last year, when 170 people were killed in a series of suicide bombings in Baghdad and Kerbala, a holy city to the south of Baghdad where the Ashura ritual, commemorating a 7th century martyr, is most intense.
SUNNI INCLUSION
Dressed in black for mourning and holding aloft green banners bearing the name Hussein, the martyred grandson of the prophet Mohammad, thousands filled central Baghdad for the Ashura march, some of them flailing themselves with chains.
Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), the main party in the Shi'ite alliance that won the Jan. 30 election, addressed the crowd with a message of political conciliation.
"I call on all Iraqis to unite and I assure everyone the Iraq we want is a unified and secure Iraq where every citizen, without exception, enjoys justice and equality," Hakim told the crowd, which chanted "Hussein, Hussein" and "God is Greatest."
"We say it now and we will always say it, that we are open to all Iraqis, because they are partners in this nation," he said, in one of the strongest declarations yet of Shi'ite intentions to include Sunnis in the political process.
Most members of the Sunni Muslim sect that had dominated Iraq for decades until a U.S.-led invasion overthrew Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) in 2003, did not vote in the poll and they will barely be represented in the new 275-seat National Assembly.
GOVERNMENT IN WORKS
Iraq's Electoral Commission announced Thursday that the main Shi'ite coalition, the United Iraqi Alliance, had secured 140 seats in the assembly, just enough for a slim majority.
A Kurdish alliance came second and will have 75 seats, while a list headed by interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, a secular Shi'ite, will have 40. Sunni Arabs have fewer than 10 seats.
A two-thirds majority is needed in the assembly to decide the top government posts, a margin the Shi'ite alliance could secure if it allies with the Kurdish coalition.
Intense talks have been going on for two weeks to determine who will take the top positions, with the Kurds expected to get the presidency and the Shi'ite bloc the prime minister's post.
But it is not clear who from the United Iraqi Alliance will be the preferred choice. The front runner is physician Ibrahim al-Jaafari, a religious Shi'ite and leader of the Dawa Party.
Ahmad Chalabi, another former exile and former Pentagon favorite, is also pushing to have his candidacy considered.
Jaafari has said he expects a decision in a couple of days. Many officials expect the announcement of the president, two vice-presidents and prime minister to be made together.
Whoever ends up as prime minister faces the daunting task of improving security in a country plagued by suicide bombings and abductions -- two Indonesian journalists were reported missing in western Iraq Friday and were believed kidnapped.
At Friday's Baghdad march, there was a small presence of Iraqi police near the main procession, as well as many members of the Badr Organization, a Shi'ite militia loyal to SCIRI.
The march also included a funeral procession for three members of the Badr Organization who SCIRI says were killed in Iraqi police custody in Baghdad earlier this month. Iraq's interior ministry said it was investigating their deaths.
In northern Iraq, three U.S. soldiers were killed in separate attacks in and near the city of Mosul Thursday, raising to 1,117 the number killed in action since March 2003.