KARBALA, Jan 30: Thousands of security personnel were being deployed in southern Iraq on Monday to stop insurgents’ attacks on Muharram gatherings as militants carried out attacks on local and foreign forces in the area.

At least 8,000 police and military personnel are to stand guard in the holy city of Karbala during the Muharram Majalis which begin on Wednesday, according to city governor Ali al-Khalil.

The gatherings of mourners which continue for 10 days have often been a target of Sunni insurgents as tens of thousands of Shia mourners visit the mausoleums of Imam Hussain (AS) and other martyrs of Karbala.

In 2004, 170 people died in attacks during the mourning ceremonies around mausoleums in Karbala and Baghdad. Last year 44 people died and 52 wounded in Karbala when a man wearing an explosives belt blew himself up, at the shrine of Imam Hussein.

Security around the mausoleums, within the walls of the mosque compound, is the responsibility of a special security body directly under the control of religious authorities.

“The security forces will lay a special emphasis on vacant fields that might be used as launching pads for mortars,” the governor said.

Special bomb-detecting vehicles will scour the roads of the city during the mourning ceremonies to check for any hidden explosives.

On Aashura, the 10th day of Muharram, Shias commemorate the martyrdom of Imam Hussein, members of his family and his companions who were massacred in Karbala in 680 AD by troops of Yazid.

Meanwhile, Sunni insurgents carried out fresh attacks on Iraqi and foreign forces across the southern region of the country on Monday.

A suicide car bomber blew himself up next to a police training centre in the southeastern city of Nasiriyah, killing two policemen and wounding 38 others, police said.

The bomber struck during a routine training session.

“It was an open area where the policemen were training when a suicide car bomber blew up a car,” said an officer from Nasiriyah, 375 kilometres from Baghdad.

Rebels also carried out attacks on foreign troops.

An Italian soldier was wounded when a roadside bomb exploded near his patrol outside Nasiriyah where the Italian military is based, a spokesman for the Italian contingent said.

Italy has the fourth-largest contingent in the US-led coalition, after the United States, Britain and South Korea.

A roadside bomb also targeting a patrol of the Danish army went off just north of the port city of Basra, injuring five Iraqi civilians but leaving the Danes unscathed.

It was the first attack against the Danish forces stationed in Iraq since fiery sermons in Baghdad mosques on Friday condemned Copenhagen and a Danish newspaper for printing satirical cartoons portraying the holy Prophet Muhammed (peace be upon him).

The sermons were heard mostly in Baghdad’s Shia mosques and the Danes are stationed with the British forces in the overwhelmingly Shia south.

In western Baghdad, a roadside bomb also targeted an Iraqi police patrol, killing one policeman, while on the dangerous road to the airport a civilian was killed and four injured when they came under fire as they were installing barriers along the median.

A wave of fresh violence has been unleashed by Sunni insurgents in the past two days with dozens killed and scores of others wounded, as rebels have struck with car bombs near churches and roadside bombs across the country.

A roadside blast wounded two US television journalists near the town of Taji, north of Baghdad, on Sunday.

Television anchor Bob Woodruff and his cameraman Doug Vogt were admitted to a US military hospital in Germany on Monday where they were in intensive care at the Landstuhl hospital — the biggest US medical facility outside of the United States.

The two ABC news journalists suffered head wounds.

Sunday’s attacks near churches in Baghdad and in the northern city of Kirkuk killed three people and wounded more than a dozen Iraqis.—AFP