Officials said the attack that also wounded 106 people targeted a rest station where pilgrims had stopped on their long journey to Karbala, 110 kilometres (70 miles) south of Baghdad, for a religious festival.

"At 11:45 am (0845 GMT), a woman wearing an explosives-filled belt blew herself up in the middle of a crowd of pilgrims going to Karbala," said Major General Qassim Atta, spokesman for Baghdad operational command.

An interior ministry official gave the toll and said the wounded were being treated at five hospitals in the capital.

At least five women and six children were among the dead, a medical official said earlier.

"We were serving the people when the attack occurred inside a search tent for women," said Allawi Hassan, who was being treated at Kindi hospital in Baghdad.

"The moment the explosion happened I felt as if I was flying through the air. I saw men, women and children wounded before I fainted. I then found myself in hospital," added Hassan, whose legs were hit by shrapnel.

The victims had been travelling on foot from the central province of Diyala to Karbala to observe Arbaeen rituals.

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's office in a statement blamed the Baath party of executed dictator Saddam Hussein for the attack.

"We hold Baathists and their Takfiri allies responsible for this massacre," it said.

Takfiri is a term used by the Iraqi government to refer to Al-Qaeda members.

Defence ministry spokesman General Mohammed al-Askari said the bomber came from Diyala province, northeast of Baghdad, that has in the past been a stronghold of Al-Qaeda which still has a local presence.

"Apart from today, there have already been 25 other attacks carried out by women suicide bombers coming from the province," he told AFP.

Arbaeen marks 40 days after the Ashura anniversary that commemorates the killing of revered 7th century Imam Hussein, whose shrine is considered one of the holiest places in Shiite Islam.

Tens of thousands of Shiites, including many from neighbouring Iran, make their way at Arbaeen to pay homage at the Karbala shrine, walking as a sign of greater piety.

Pilgrims are routinely searched at transit food stations because of the risk of attacks, with women coming in for special scrutiny as their faces are concealed.

Around 30,000 members of the Iraqi security forces have been deployed to Karbala for the holy festival which culminates on Friday.

Iraqi politicians and US forces have warned of rising violence ahead of a general election on March 7, the second parliamentary ballot since the 2003 US-led invasion which ushered in a deadly insurgency.

Rebels had in past months appeared to have directed their attacks away from strikes on religious targets to government buildings in Baghdad.

This has prompted the army to urge government officials to change their travel itineraries and avoid high-risk areas in the capital, the Baghdad military command said on Monday.

It also said rebels had "invented high-capacity explosives" that cannot be detected by controversial bomb detectors imported from Britain, which has banned their sale abroad.

Baghdad has been gripped by a series of deadly attacks that targeted government buildings.

Last Tuesday, a suicide bomb attack at Iraq's forensics headquarters in Baghdad, claimed by an Al-Qaeda group, killed 18 people and wounded 80 others.

The same group, the Islamic State of Iraq, admitted responsibility for three deadly bomb attacks on Baghdad hotels the previous day, huge blasts that killed at least 36 people and wounded 71.

Nearly 400 people were killed and more than 1,000 wounded last year in coordinated vehicle bombings at government buildings, including the ministries of finance, foreign affairs and justice in August, October and December.

Germany and the European Union both condemned the latest bloodshed.

"This act of terrorism should not stop the reconciliation of Iraq," German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said during a meeting with EU foreign policy supremo Catherine Ashton, who denounced "the terrible incident."

earlier related report
British military ill-prepared for Iraq invasion: chief
London (AFP) Feb 1, 2010 - Britain's military "simply didn't have enough time" to source all the equipment needed for the 2003 Iraq invasion, the professional head of the armed forces said Monday at an inquiry into the war.

Air Chief Marshal Jock Stirrup, then in a top role dealing with military equipment, said it would have made a "significant difference" if the military had had the full six months required to prepare, rather than just four.

Meanwhile, the man in Stirrup's job at the time of the 2003 invasion, General Michael Walker, told the Chilcot inquiry that military top brass had threatened to quit over defence cuts the following year.

"There was indeed a list of stuff that we were having to make decisions about and I think we drew a line somewhere halfway down the page and said, 'if you go any further than that you will probably have to look for a new set of chiefs,'" he said.

Walker added that military leaders were "anxious" about the legality of the war until then attorney general Peter Goldsmith gave it the green light.

That decision has already been the focus of extensive questioning at the inquiry.

For his part, Stirrup said the armed forces "simply didn't have enough time, as it turned out, to do everything we needed to do before the operation started".

Asked if an extra two months to prepare would have helped, Stirrup added: "I think it would have made a significant difference. That's 50 percent additional time.

"We were finding that in a number of cases we were getting 100 percent delivery about a month or two after the operation started. So I think that the six-month assumption wasn't a bad one."

Stirrup said military chiefs had told ministers of the problems, although the inquiry has already heard of high-level concerns that military preparations in public could hamper diplomatic efforts to address the Iraq situation.

"We made it absolutely clear to ministers that if we were not allowed to engage with industry... we could take these (preparations) no further and that there was a serious risk that they would not all be delivered by the assumed start of operations," he added.

Former prime minister Tony Blair, who led Britain into the war in which 179 of its troops were killed, appeared at the public inquiry Friday, notably failing to apologise for his role and sparking fury among some military families.

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