Blew the Shiite out of them

The Washington Post has an article by Anthony Shadid about the latest suicide bomber in Baghdad:

A woman wearing an explosives belt packed with ball bearings blew herself up in Baghdad near one of Iraq's most sacred Shiite shrines, killing at least 40 people and wounding scores more in a devastating attack that shattered festive celebrations ahead of Shiite Islam's holiest day, Interior Ministry officials said. The blast, just twenty yards from a door to the two gold-leafed domes of the Imam Moussa al-Kadhim shrine, tore through a crowd of Iraqi and Iranian pilgrims waiting to enter a checkpoint, witnesses said. Women are usually searched less aggressively than men, allowing the assailant to thwart the stringent security ringing the shrine.
Residents described scenes of carnage after the woman detonated the explosives on a cool, sunny morning. Dismembered bodies were strewn across a muddy road and near a covered market, the force of the blast hurling some parts onto the roofs of nearby two-story buildings. Volunteers gathered bloodied pieces of flesh in black plastic bags.
In the ensuing, chaotic minutes, witnesses said, some peopled vomited at the sight and smell of blood. Survivors and the wounded cried religious invocations to Hussein, the grandson of the prophet Muhammad, whose death will be marked Wednesday, on a day known as Ashura, the most sacred day on the Shiite calendar. "They are enemies of God, and they are many," Bashir Hussein Ali, a Baghdad resident, said at the site. "This comes from the hatred in their hearts."
The Interior Ministry said forty people were killed, sixteen of them Iranian pilgrims, and seventy-two were wounded. The US military put the toll at thirty-six killed and thirty-six wounded. Witnesses said the explosives were packed with ball bearings to kill as many people as possible.
Ashura culminates ten days of mourning marking the death of Hussein and his band of outnumbered followers in a battle in AD 680 at what is now the city of Karbala. His killing solidified the division of the Muslim world into Shiites loyal to Hussein's family and orthodox Sunnis. The memory of Hussein's martyrdom and the emotions it evokes are comparable to sentiments in the Christian world that surround Christ's crucifixion. "Each drop of blood that falls calls your name, Hussein," a banner at the scene read.
Pilgrims marking Ashura and other Shiite holidays in Iraq have long been targets of suicide bombings designed to ignite more sectarian tension. In 2004, during the first commemoration of Ashura after the fall of Saddam Hussein, suicide bombings killed more than one hundred and sixty pilgrims in attacks in Karbala and at the same shrine attacked Sunday in Baghdad.
By most accounts, sectarian tension has declined in recent months. As a sign of that improved atmosphere, Iraqi officials, at the urging of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, had reopened the Bridge of the Imams on 11 November, rejoining Kadhimiyah, the neighborhood around the shrine, with the Sunni neighborhood of Adhamiyah, once an insurgent stronghold. The bridge had been closed since 2005, when a stampede, triggered by rumors of a suicide bomber, killed eight hundred Shiite pilgrims in one of the war's most horrific episodes.
Senior Interior Ministry officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said they had opposed the decision at the time, and on Sunday, they blamed the bridge's reopening for this attack and another one on 27 December that killed at least twenty-two people near a car garage. "Intelligence shows that attacks are a consequence of opening the bridge," one senior official said. Although officials think both attackers used the bridge to enter the neighborhood, which is shrouded in security, the official said there were no plans to close it again.
At the scene, in a sign of the deep suspicion that still reigns, residents speculated on the assailant's identity: al-Qaeda, Sunni insurgents, Iranians, and Americans. Many said they were dumbfounded at how a suicide bomber could pass through roadblocks that ban traffic around the shrine and police checkpoints where everyone entering is searched.
Even on its worst days, Baghdad remains a city remarkable for its resilience. In two hours, volunteers had swept away the corpses and washed the street of blood. To the cadence of drums and horns, processions moved down other streets toward the shrine and its four minarets. Traditional laments played from scratchy speakers along the road.

Rico says this quaint notion of not searching women as thoroughly as men has gotta stop...