Snipers kill 17 Iraq Shiite pilgrims

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Snipers firing from rooftops and a cemetery killed at least 17 people and wounded dozens Sunday in a series of attacks on a Shiite religious procession that drew hundreds of thousands of pilgrims to Baghdad. The "terrorist assaults" took place when the pilgrims were walking through Sunni areas on their way to the shrine of Imam Moussa Kadhim, one of 12 Shiite saints, Health Ministry spokesman Qassim Allawi told The Associated Press.

In one neighborhood, security forces and Shiite militiamen in flak jackets were seen exchanging gunfire with unseen assailants who were firing from houses and buildings. Some of the attackers were firing from behind tombstones in a Sunni cemetery.

The violence defied a weekend driving ban to prevent car bombs amid a cycle of tit-for-tat attacks by Shiites and Sunnis in Iraq since the Feb. 22 bombing of a Shiite mosque in Samarra. The sectarian warfare, along with the deadly Sunni Arab insurgency, has become the biggest challenge for the U.S.-backed national unity government.

Thousands of extra U.S. troops also have been deployed in recent weeks as part of a security crackdown in the capital as many fear the bloodshed, which is claiming about 100 lives a day, could lead to an all-out civil war.

The ceremonies at the shrine in the northern Baghdad neighborhood of Kazimiyah continued despite the attacks, which Allawi said occurred in three or four neighborhoods at least a mile away.

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