BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Bombers struck at Shia pilgrims celebrating a religious festival in Baghdad and across Iraq on Wednesday, killing more than 70 people.

 

It was the worst day of violence since early January, when four bombs in Baghdad killed 73, and the latest in a spate of bombings on Shia religious sites.

 

At least 30 people were killed when four blasts hit pilgrims across Baghdad as they marched through the city to mark the anniversary of the martyrdom of Imam Musa al-Kadhim (AS), a great-great-great-great-grandson of Prophet Mohammad (PBUH).

 

One car bomb exploded outside a Baghdad Shia mosque while another blast tore into groups of pilgrims as they rested at refreshment tents along the route to a shrine in Kadhimiya district.

"A group of pilgrims were walking and passed by a tent offering food and drinks when suddenly a car exploded near them," said Wathiq Muhana, a policeman whose patrol was stationed near the blast in central Karrada district.

 

"People were running away covered with blood and bodies were scattered on the ground," he said.

In a separate attack in the mainly Shia southern city of Hilla, police said two simultaneous car bombs, including one detonated by a suicide bomber, exploded outside restaurants used by security forces, killing 22 people.

 

"When a minibus packed with policemen stopped near the restaurants, a car exploded near the bus," said Maitham Sahib, owner of a restaurant in Hilla near the blast. "It's heart breaking. It is just sirens, and screams of wounded people."

 

In total, more than 21 bombs exploded on Wednesday in Baghdad and the southern Iraqi cities of Kerbala, Balad, Haswa, which are predominantly Shia areas that have been targeted before by Sunni Islamist insurgents.

 

One person was killed when two bombs also hit offices of an ethnic Kurdish party in the northern city of Kirkuk, one of the areas at the heart of dispute between Baghdad's central government and Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan region in the north.

 

Just as the pilgrims began arriving in Baghdad on Sunday, at least six people were killed and 38 wounded when two mortar bombs struck a packed square in Baghdad's Kadhimiya district.

 

Earlier this month, 26 people were killed and more than 190 wounded when a suicide bomber detonated an explosive-rigged car outside a Shia religious office in Baghdad, an attack claimed by al-Qaeda's Iraqi affiliate, Islamic State of Iraq.

 

While violence has fallen sharply since the height of the war that followed the 2003 U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein, insurgents are still potent. Large bombings generally still hit once a month, usually on security forces, government offices or Shia targets.