Bomb Kills 9 at Sufi Monastery
Sectarian violence appeared Friday to be embroiling another of Iraq’s fractious religious groups, as authorities reported a suicide bombing that killed nine people Thursday evening at a Sufi place of worship north of Baghdad. Witnesses said a minibus packed with explosives crashed into the outer wall of a takya , or monastery, outside the northern city of Balad shortly before sundown Thursday. More than 40 people, some of them children and all of them adherents of the Sufi branch of Sunni Islam, had gathered inside the monastery, the witnesses said, and when they rushed outside upon hearing the sounds of the crash, the minivan’s driver detonated his payload.Full Story