From LA Times
By Tina Susman

Suicide bombers blew up a bus and a flatbed truck in separate attacks here today that targeted Shiite pilgrims returning from an annual pilgrimage to the southern city of Karbala. At least 42 people were killed in the explosions.

Another eight Iraqis, including three policemen, died in other attacks, which came a day after regional and world powers met in Baghdad to come up with ways of halting the chaos in Iraq.

Sunday’s violence began with a car bomb blast in the mainly Shiite Karada neighborhood shortly before noon. Two people died in the attack, likely carried out by Sunni Arab insurgents.

About an hour later, a suicide car bomber blew himself up near a flatbed truck loaded with Shiite pilgrims elsewhere in Karada. Police and hospital officials said the explosion killed 31 Iraqis, most of them young men who were returning home from the pilgrimage.

The flattened wreckage of the yellow sedan apparently used in the attack was shown on Iraqi television being towed away while the charred wreckage of the truck lay in the middle of the street.

A few miles away in a busy square, a suicide bomber with explosives strapped to his chest boarded a bus ferrying Shiite pilgrims home to the Shiite district of Sadr City and blew himself up. At least 10 people died, including the driver of a car behind the bus.

“I don’t know what is going on these days,” said Salih Merza, a grocer in Sadr City. “It is not an act of bravery to kill innocent, unarmed people.”

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