BAGHDAD, Iraq — Suicide bombers stalked through the leading Shiite Muslim mosque in Baghdad on Friday, setting off explosions that killed some worshippers as they streamed out after prayers and others as they surged back inside for safety, witnesses and police said.
Up to 79 people died in the three blasts that ripped through hundreds of faithful at the Baratha mosque, the religious center in the capital of the biggest Shiite religious party in Iraq's governing coalition.
In an intensifying 1 1/2-month-old campaign of violence targeting Shiite shrines, Friday's attack was the second in as many days at a mosque associated with one of Iraq's governing Shiite religious parties, which rule Iraq through the loyalty of the Shiite majority and of the parties' armed militias. On Thursday, a car bombing near the Imam Ali mosque in the southern city of Najaf killed at least 13 people.
The Feb. 22 bombing of a Shiite shrine in the largely Sunni Arab city of Samarra, north of Baghdad, has touched off Iraq's worst sectarian violence since U.S. forces invaded three years ago.
"The ground was all flesh and blood," said Abbas Talib, 53, a gas station attendant who rushed into the Baratha mosque after Friday's blasts. His blue jumpsuit and hands were soaked with the blood of the dead people he had carried.
"I saw the bodies and blood covering the walls and ground. Many people died inside," said Talib, who said he carried out 12 bleeding bodies without pausing to see if they were dead or alive. "Many died."
Also Friday, the U.S. military said at least three American troops were killed in separate attacks in Baghdad and north of the capital. The deaths raised to at least 2,349 the number of American forces killed since the Iraq war started in March 2003.
One service member died Friday of wounds suffered while on patrol in western Baghdad, the military said. The statement said the victim's patrol had come under small-arms fire. On Thursday, a soldier from the Army's 172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team was killed when his combat patrol struck a roadside bomb near Beiji, 155 miles north of Baghdad. And a Marine was killed in action Thursday in Anbar province, west of Baghdad.
Baghdad had been on high alert amid rumors that car bombers were roaming the streets Friday looking for targets.
At the Baratha mosque, affiliated with the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, security is routinely rigid, with worshippers body-searched as they enter. But the bombers apparently slipped in as worshippers left the mosque after prayers. News agencies quoted a police officer as saying two of the bombers were dressed in the all-covering black cloak worn by Shiite women, hiding the bombs strapped to them.
The first explosion tore through worshippers at the main exit, witnesses said. Survivors rushed back inside the mosque, where a second bomb went off three minutes later. Ten seconds after that, a third bomb exploded.
Outside, survivors clambered up the fence around the mosque and leapt over, fearing more bombs. Blood-soaked wounded ran through the streets, looking for a place to hide.
"Don't gather in one spot! Don't gather in one spot!" police loudspeakers warned.
Within minutes, the sealed-off streets around the shrine resembled a battlefield. Iraqi security forces broke through security cordons to carry off the wounded. As always after bombings in Iraq, bursts of automatic-weapon fire by adrenaline-charged security forces kept survivors huddling in fear for long minutes after the blasts.
Col. Sami Jabara, a Baghdad police spokesman, said 68 people were killed. News agencies put the toll at 79, with 160 wounded.
Immediately after the blasts, police and officials from the Shiite movement led by cleric and militia leader Moqtada al-Sadr said two Baghdad mosques linked to al-Sadr also had been hit, with many dead. But health workers at Baghdad's main hospitals said they treated no casualties from the areas of those two mosques, and residents said they had heard no explosions.
Well over 1,000 people have died and tens of thousands have been driven from their homes in sectarian violence following the bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra. Immediately after that bombing, Shiite militia fighters poured out of Sadr City, a stronghold of al-Sadr support in Baghdad, and al-Sadr's armed men were blamed for a wave of retaliatory attacks.
U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said in a statement Friday, "I urge all Iraqis to exercise restraint in the wake of this tragedy, to come together to fight terror, to continue to resist the provocation to sectarian violence, and to pursue justice within the framework of Iraq's laws and constitution."
Ridah Jawad Taqi, a spokesman for the Supreme Council, repeated the Shiites' long-held assertion that attacks such as Friday's were calculated provocations by those "wishing to ignite a sectarian conflict."
Shortly before Friday's attack, a ranking Supreme Council leader suggested the country's crisis had reached such a point that it was time to turn to Shiite religious leaders for political guidance. Shiites must ask Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, Iraq's most influential religious figure, "to solve this crisis," Sader al-Deen al-Qubbanchi said in his Friday sermon at a mosque in Najaf.
Efforts to form a government have been stalled for nearly for months over reappointment of Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, supported only by his own Dawa Party and by Sadr's organization. On Friday, Dawa suggested for the first time that al-Jaafari might withdraw his candidacy, but only if another member of the party were appointed prime minister instead, an official close to the talks said. Other Shiite parties were said to be considering the idea.