Attack on Iraqi Funeral Kills at Least 42

BAGHDAD, Jan. 4 -- A distant crackle of gunfire broke the tranquility of al-Muqdad cemetery as mourners gathered around the grave of a bodyguard gunned down the day before. The war-hardened residents of Muqdadiyah, used to such sounds, thought it was nothing. Then there was an explosion, and the living abruptly joined the dead.

The attack by a suicide bomber and heavily armed gunmen on a funeral procession for the nephew of a Shiite Muslim politician Wednesday afternoon killed at least 42 people and wounded at least 36, the director of the city's hospital said. It was the deadliest incident on a bloody day that ended weeks of relative peace since parliamentary elections on Dec. 15.

A string of car bombings and shootings claimed the lives of at least 12 other people across the country, including an Oil Ministry official and his son. Insurgents also pressed their assault on the country's oil industry, attacking a convoy of fuel trucks along the dangerous road from the Baiji refinery in northern Iraq to Baghdad.

The attack in Muqdadiyah, a city about 60 miles north of Baghdad in Diyala province, took place at the funeral of Mohammed Hadi Baga, the nephew of Ahmed Baga, a leading member of the Shiite-dominated Dawa party. Mohammed Baga had been working as a bodyguard for his uncle when gunmen shot him Tuesday. He died the next morning, and about 200 relatives, friends and neighbors had gathered to mourn him.

"We were standing around the grave as the body of my son was being laid to rest," said Mohammed Baga's father, Hadi Jasim Baga. He said he heard the sound of distant gunfire but did not think it was aimed at the procession. "Then suddenly there was a huge explosion," he said. "There were bodies and people strewn all around."

Wounded witnesses in the city's hospital gave similar accounts, saying an attacker wearing explosives blew himself up in the middle of the crowd. The graveyard became a battleground as unseen gunmen shot at the crowd with assault rifles and mortars and guards protecting the procession attempted to return fire, a police officer said.

At the end of the firefight, bodies, shrapnel and spent bullets littered the cemetery, which visitors enter by crossing a small brook on a bridge made of palm tree trunks. Eucalyptus and date palms provide shade for mourners, and shrubs and greenery run between the brick and marble gravestones that witnesses said are now smeared with blood.

U.S. and Iraqi forces quickly cordoned off the city of 200,000, whose population is evenly split between Shiites and Sunni Arabs. It has been stricken by constant sectarian violence since the U.S.-led invasion overthrew President Saddam Hussein in 2003.

Hadi Baga said he believed the attack was meant to provoke more hatred between Sunnis and Shiites. Though the Baga family is Shiite, he said the funeral was attended by many Sunnis who wanted to pay their last respects to a neighbor.

"This is a despicable act that is aimed against the Shiites, but the terrorists don't know that many of the dead are Sunni," he said.

In addition to striking at the religious fault lines that divide this country, insurgents also continued their assault on Iraq's economy. In the latest incident, a convoy of 64 fuel trucks came under attack from gunfire, mortar shelling and a roadside bomb while making the harrowing run from the Baiji refinery in northern Iraq to Baghdad.

The effect of the attacks was unclear. A Washington Post special correspondent traveling with the convoy for part of the journey saw three tankers in flames. The deputy commander of the Tikrit emergency police, Maj. Subhi Nadhun, said at least four tankers were set on fire and one driver was killed. A spokesman for the Oil Ministry, Asim Jihad, said that a roadside bomb destroyed one tanker and mortar fire wrecked another but that no one was hurt in the attacks.