Car bomb blast in holy Iraqi city

The Karbala blast targeted one of Shia Islam's holiest cities

A suicide car bomb has killed at least five people and injured more than 40 in the holy city of Karbala, near one of Shia Islam's most important sites.

It exploded near the Imam al-Abbas shrine, the final resting place of an early Shia leader.

Reports say police and passers-by tried to stop the bomber parking his car before he detonated the bomb.

The BBC's Jim Muir in Baghdad says attacks aimed at sacred targets clearly aim to stir up sectarian tension.

Witnesses said this blast turned the bustling central street of Karbala, within sight of the holy shrine, into an inferno of blazing cars and burnt out shop-fronts.

As emergency services rushed the wounded to hospitals, police sealed the city off.

Karbala, 80km (50 miles) south of Baghdad, is Iraq's second holiest Shia city after Najaf.

Shias make pilgrimages to both locations, and bury their dead in large cemeteries there.

Karbala has been hit several times before, most recently in January when more than 50 people died in a similar suicide attack.

Reconciliation conference

There has been a sharp upsurge in sectarian violence in Iraq since the start of the year.

The Prime Minister, Nouri Maliki, has called for a national reconciliation conference to be held in a week's time.

But some Sunni groups are already saying they will boycott it, while Shia factions say they will not sit down with supporters of Saddam Hussein's ousted Baathist regime.

Karbala resident Mushin al-Musawi told the BBC that Saturday's attack "shouldn't have happened".

He said: "Karbala is a small city and should be under control. But unfortunately, because of the large number of visitors which sometime reaches around one million in one night, it seems it's very difficult to be controlled."

Other attacks were reported around Iraq on Saturday:

• A car bomb killed three people in the northern city of Mosul
• Two people died in a mortar attack in the mainly Shia suburb of Kadhimiya in Baghdad
• Four civilians were killed in separate attacks by gunmen on crowds in Baquba, AFP news agency reports.