Attack on Shi'ite pilgrims kills three in Iraq

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Militants attacked a group of pilgrims in Baghdad on Sunday as they walked to one of Shi'ite Islam's holiest festivals, killing three people and wounding 36, Iraqi police said.

They said the pilgrims were hit by a roadside bomb and then fired on by gunmen in Doura, a southern district of Baghdad, on a road used by hundreds of pilgrims walking to the festival of Arbain in the holy southern Shi'ite city of Kerbala.

Millions of Shi'ite pilgrims are expected in Kerbala for the festival this week, which commemorates the end of the 40-day mourning period following Ashura, a religious ritual that marks the death of Prophet Mohammad's grandson in 680.

Many Arbain pilgrims prefer to walk to Kerbala, 110 km (70 miles) south of Baghdad, because they believe the effort will bring them greater spiritual reward.

Security has been tightened compared to previous years, Kerbala's police chief Major-General Raad Shakir told Reuters last week, and Iraqi tanks are being used to protect the city for the first time, in addition to 40,000 police and soldiers.

All public transport, including bicycles, has been banned within a 25 km (15.5 mile) radius of the city, and 600 female security staff have been assigned to search women, police said.

Militants have used horses and carts, bicycles and motorcycles in bomb attacks in the past. There has also been a spate of suicide bombings carried out by women in recent months.

In previous years, militants have killed scores of pilgrims in suicide bombings and other attacks. Sunni Islamist al Qaeda views Shi'ites, a majority in Iraq but a minority in the Muslim world, as heretics.

(Writing by Mohammed Abbas; editing by Sami Aboudi)