Reidblog [The Reid Report blog]

BAGHDAD, Iraq, July 6 — A suicide bomber rammed his car into a group of Iranian pilgrims visiting a Shiite shrine in the city of Najaf and blew it up, killing at least 12 people and wounding more than 40, Iraqi officials said.

At least five of the dead and 22 of the wounded were Iranians. The blast totally destroyed two buses the pilgrims had arrived in and left a crack in the outer wall of the Maitham al-Tammar shrine, the officials said.

The relations between the country's young government and Iran is one of the touchiest of the many conflicts dividing the country's ethnic groups.

The leading Shiite parties have close ties to Iran, a predominantly Shiite country, leading many Sunnis, who led the fight during the bloody Iraq-Iran war two decades ago, to question their loyalty. And Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has accused Iran of infiltrating members of its Revolutionary Guard forces into Iran and supplying insurgents with sophisticated bombs.

Najaf is the home of shrines considered by Shiites to be among their holiest, and is the destination of hundreds of thousands of pilgrims every year from Iran. The city's deputy mayor, Abdul-Hussein Aftan, called the attack an attempt "at derailing stability and security of the city."

But he said that it would not "stop our brothers the Iranians from coming."