About 20 minutes later and five miles away, in the neighborhood of Bayaa, guards at another mosque got a phone call alerting them to the first explosion. Moments later, they saw three men get out of a car and start walking toward worshipers gathered outside the mosque.
Two guards in the balcony of the mosque shouted at the approaching strangers, said one of the guards there, who gave his name as Abu Murtadha. "The guards shouted stop, stop, stop. But they didn't stop. So the guards by the gate shot at them.
Aqil, who gave only his first name, cries on his brother's coffin at Yarmouk Hospital after a suicide bombing at a mosque in the Dora neighborhood of Baghdad. Other attacks occurred at mosques in and near Baghdad.
(Mohammed Uraibi -- AP)
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"The first one blew up when the shots started. The second one threw a grenade and then blew himself up. The third one ran toward the mosque and blew himself up," said Abu Murtadha, who wore a guard's badge bearing the picture of radical Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr.
One person was killed by the attackers, according to an official at Yarmouk Hospital's chaotic receiving desk.
Five miles to the northeast, mortar shells struck a shop near a Shiite procession in Baghdad's Ashulah neighborhood. Police said three people were killed and five injured.
Later in the day, a car bomb outside a Shiite mosque in the town of Iskandariyah, south of Baghdad, killed seven people and wounded 10, the Reuters news agency reported.
Attacks aimed at Iraqi and U.S. security forces also exacted a heavy toll Friday.
Two American soldiers were killed by bombs -- one near Diwaniyah, south of Baghdad, the other 25 miles north of the capital, according to the military. The military also announced the deaths of three soldiers in separate attacks Thursday in and near the northern city of Mosul.
Also in Mosul, three mortar rounds fell on a bazaar near City Hall, killing a teenage boy and wounding three people, according to Zaid Azzam, a doctor at Republican Hospital.
And in Baqubah, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, an Iraqi army officer was shot to death and three others, including a 2-year-old child, were wounded.
The police chief in the holy city of Najaf, Ghalib Jazaeri, confirmed that two of his sons, both lieutenants in the police force, were abducted and executed in nearby Karbala. Jazaeri, a former military officer, has been highly visible in efforts to oust insurgents from Najaf, but he said recently that he was worried about infiltrators inside his police department.
In Karbala, worshipers flocked to the shrine of Hussein, the grandson of the prophet Muhammad whose death in battle in the 7th century is the focus of the Ashura rite. Shiites march through the streets in a funereal cadence, beating themselves on the back with chains in symbolic penitence for the betrayal that led to Hussein's death.
Last year, a massive car bomb there and bombings in Baghdad claimed more than 170 lives. This year, Karbala was flooded with police and Iraqi soldiers. Iraq closed its borders to prevent Iranian pilgrims from crowding into town.
"We are not afraid. Death comes everywhere and every day," said a woman who gave her name as Um Mohammed, 42, and said she had traveled to Karbala from the countryside. But, she added, "we feel safe here because of the security measures."
Correspondent Anthony Shadid in Baghdad and special correspondents Sahar Nageeb in Baghdad, Dlovan Brwari in Mosul and Saad Sarhan in Karbala contributed to this report.
