BAGHDAD, Oct 21: Bombers killed 24 people in two attacks on Iraqi families shopping on Saturday for Eid, in a deadly response to an appeal for peace from religious leaders.

Twenty people were killed and 30 more wounded in the attack in Mahmudiyah, 30kms southwest of the capital, in one of the bloodiest attacks of its type in recent weeks.

In an earlier blast, a suicide attacker detonated a bomb on board a bus returning from one of Baghdad’s largest markets, killing four people and wounding 15, mainly women and children headed home with shopping.

The deadly attacks came as US military casualties continued to mount — three more marines were reported dead — and as Shia militias skirmished with Iraqi police in two southern cities.

Children’s clothes and toys were scattered across a bridge over the Tigris that runs from one of Baghdad’s biggest public markets, crammed with families preparing for Eid.

“Is this the Makkah document? Killing children and those buying toys for them?” roared Abu Sajad, a stocky white-bearded man in his 50s at the scene. “The holidays are the only days now when children are happy.”

He was referring to a meeting in Makkah on Friday of 29 religious leaders from Sunni and Shia sects that was aimed at staunching the bloody sectarian violence in Iraq.

They urged Iraqis not to shed Muslim blood and called on them to ‘join ranks with a view to the independence of Iraq and its territorial integrity’.—AFP