Eleven killed in suicide bomb in Iraq's Kerbala

BAGHDAD, Apr 28 (Reuters) Eleven people were killed and 25 others were wounded in a suicide car bombing in the holy Iraqi Shi'ite city of Kerbala today, a hospital source told Reuters.

The blast hit 500 metres from the Imam al-Abbas shrine in Kerbala, 100 km southwest of Baghdad. The source at Hussein General Hospital said the hospital had received 11 bodies.

A Reuters witness said he saw tens of people hurt and some killed in the blast, which was in a busy commercial street containing many shops and restaurants.

A suicide car bomber killed 40 people at a crowded bus station in Kerbala on April 14. That attack was near the Imam Hussein shrine, where the grandson of Islam's Prophet Mohammed is buried in one of Iraq's holiest cities.

Attacks at or near shrines are highly provocative.

The bombing of a Shi'ite shrine in Samarra in February 2006 unleashed sectarian violence between majority Shi'ites and once-dominant Sunni Arabs that has pushed Iraq to the brink of all-out civil war.

REUTERS RR KN2143