Two suicide bombs in Iraq holy cities kill 62

Suicide car bombers struck Iraq's two main Shi'ite holy cities of Najaf and Kerbala, killing at least 62 people and wounding nearly 130 in co-ordinated attacks six weeks before a historic election.

It was the highest bomb death toll in Iraq since July and by far the bloodiest attack since last month's US assault on the Sunni city of Fallujah, which aimed to quell the insurgency.

Both bombs, which went off about two hours apart yesterday, exploded near crowded bus stations in an apparently coordinated attempt to cause as much bloodshed as possible among Shi'ites, a long-oppressed majority expected to dominate the poll on 30 January.

Earlier, in Baghdad, gunmen killed three Electoral Commission employees after hauling them from a car on a busy street.

The blasts were not far from important Shi'ite shrines - the Imam Ali mosque in Najaf and Imam Hussein mosque in Kerbala.

The attacks seemed designed to provoke sectarian conflict with Saddam Hussein's Sunni minority. Shi'ite leaders called on their people not to retaliate.