Car bomb explodes outside Shiite mosque in Baghdad during Muslim holiday

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - A car bomb exploded Friday outside a Shiite mosque where worshippers were celebrating a major Muslim holiday, killing at least 14 people and wounding 40, police and hospital officials said - the latest violence ahead of this month's elections.

The car blew up outside the al-Taf mosque in southwestern Baghdad, where Shiites were celebrating one of Islam's most important holidays, Eid al-Adha, or Feast of Sacrifice. The feast coincides with the yearly pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia.

Attacks on Shiites have increased before the Jan. 30 parliamentary and provincial elections. Friday's blast was the second outside a Shiite mosque in the capital this week and it came a day after a chief terror leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, berated Shiites in an Internet audio recording that appeared aimed at sowing division in the country.

Iraq's Shiites - a community that was oppressed for decades - strongly supports the vote, believing it will propel them to a position of influence equal to their standing as the country's majority group. They make up an estimated 60 percent of the Iraq's 26 million people.

But militants among the Sunni Arab minority - which lost privilege when their patron Saddam Hussein was toppled - have vowed to stop the election. Some Sunni clerics and politicians have called for a boycott, saying violence in Sunni areas will keep people from the polls and skew the outcome of the balloting against them.

In a new Internet audio recording, a speaker purported to be al-Zarqawi, Iraq's most feared terror leader, denounced Iraqi Shiites for fighting alongside U.S. troops and asked Iraqis to prepare for a long war against the Americans.

Al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian-born leader of Iraq's al-Qaida affiliate, ridiculed Iraq's most prominent Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, and berated Shiites for fighting against their Sunni countrymen in the U.S.-led assault on Fallujah in November.

"They broke into the safe houses of God," the speaker said of Shiites. "They defiled them and they hung the photos of their Satan, al-Sistani, on the walls and they spitefully wrote: 'Today, your land; tomorrow it will be your honor."'

The authenticity of the tape could not be verified.

An official at Baghdad's Yarmouk Hospital said the car bomb at the mosque killed at least 14 people and wounded 40 others. It exploded as worshippers were leaving prayers in the building, a witness said, leaving several cars in flames and showering the area with charred debris.

Dozens of weeping men and women frantically searched the hospital for news about loved ones feared caught up in the bombing.

A distraught man sat beside his dead 14-year-old son, covered with a sheet, and cried out, "I had breakfast with him this morning. I told him, 'Let's go to your grandfather,' but he insisted on going for prayers first."

A woman dressed in a black cloak, or abaya, fainted as she identified the body of her son in the hospital's morgue and was carried away by relatives.

During Friday prayers at Baghdad's Um al-Quraa mosque, a prominent Sunni cleric issued a fresh call for putting off the elections until the country is more secure and free of its foreign occupiers.

"How does the government call for holding elections at a time when it cannot protect places of worship in the country?" Sheikh Mahmoud al-Sumaidei said.

"It is important to have a country free from occupation forces before holding elections. Then the elections will become an Iraqi demand rather than a foreign demand and at that point we can choose our leaders," he said.

In the 90-minute message from al-Zarqawi, which was posted on the Web Thursday, the insurgent leader called on his followers to show patience and prepare for a long struggle against the Americans, promising that "ferocious wars ... take their time" but victory was assured.

Al-Zarqawi's al-Qaida in Iraq group was responsible for kidnapping and beheading several foreigners, including Americans, before the fall of their Fallujah base. The United States has offered a $25 million reward for al-Zarqawi's capture or death - the same amount as for Osama bin Laden.

West of Baghdad, a dozen gunmen stormed a police station Friday and blew it up, police said. No one was hurt in the attack, but the militants reportedly made off with police weapons and other gear.

Insurgents burst into the station, which was nearly empty for the holiday, and placed explosives inside, said Iraqi police Capt. Abdullah al-Hiti. The blast destroyed the station in the center of the town of Hit, some 100 miles west of Baghdad.

A U.S. soldier was killed Friday during a pre-dawn raid north of Baghdad, the military said.

The soldier from Army's 1st Infantry Division, whose name was withheld pending notification of his family, was killed in an operation against members of an insurgent bomb-making cell in the town of Duluiyah, the military said in a statement.

One Iraqi was killed in the raid and another soldier was wounded.

Also in the area, Iraqi Army soldiers made a gruesome discovery in the city of Baqouba, finding a body with its hands tied and throat cut, the U.S. military said Friday. There were no other details.

In the northern city of Mosul, U.S. troops shot and killed three insurgents who attacked a police vehicle, a military spokesman said. For a second day, insurgents shelled a hospital in the city where U.S. and Iraqi forces have taken up positions, residents said. There was no word on casualties.

An Italian soldier was killed Friday by a burst of gunfire while riding in a helicopter that was patrolling the southern Shiite city of Nasiriyah, Italy's Defense Ministry said. The area has been deemed safe for elections.

In northern Iraq, insurgents attacked two schools that are to be used as polling stations later this month, but no one was hurt, police said. One of the schools was hit with a rocket, and police dismantled a bomb planted at a third school.

U.S. soldiers in Baghdad seized mortar rounds, TNT and weapons in a raid on a dangerous street that was meant in part as a display of American dominance over the troubled sector, the military said. Four explosions were heard in the area Friday morning, but the military had no immediate information on the cause.

Near the central city of Samarra, saboteurs set an oil pipeline on fire, police said. The pipeline, 12 miles south of the city, links the northern Beiji refinery to Baghdad's Dora refinery.

The pipeline was attacked in the past by insurgents who have taken aim at the oil industry to deprive the government of badly needed reconstruction money.