Ramadan bomber kills 26 at Shi'ite mosque in Iraq

HILLA, Iraq, Thursday (Reuters) A suicide bomber rammed a car into a Shi'ite mosque in central Iraq on Wednesday, bringing down part of the building and killing at least 26 worshippers celebrating the start of the holy month of Ramadan, police said.

The attack in Hilla, 100 km (60 miles) south of Baghdad, bore the hallmarks of Sunni radicals waging holy war on Shi'ites ushered to power by the U.S. invasion. It came after parliament, under U.S. and U.N. pressure, reversed a ruling on next week's constitutional referendum to appease moderate Sunni leaders.

Those Sunni Arab politicians, however, said they might still urge a boycott of the Oct. 15 vote in protest at U.S. military operations launched this week against al Qaeda guerrillas in western Iraq, which they said were causing civilian casualties.

The bomber struck at dusk as the Shi'ite faithful gathered for Ramadan prayers, a day after Sunni Muslims marked the same occasion. At least 87 people were wounded and police said they feared the death toll of 26 could rise as rescuers with a bulldozer continued to dig through the rubble overnight.

Hilla, the mainly Shi'ite capital of Babil province, has seen some of the worst sectarian attacks, including a car bomb in February that killed 125 people. Shi'ite leaders have called on the long oppressed 60-percent majority not to respond to attacks that some say are designed to spark a civil war.

A U.S. commander warned of a surge in violence in the run-up to the vote, including attacks on key government sites.

In Baghdad, the Shi'ite-dominated National Assembly voted to reverse a decision it made on Sunday which, by defining the word "voters" in different ways in the same sentence of interim laws had tried to make it all but impossible for minority Sunnis to veto the constitution by rejecting it in three provinces.

The United Nations, which made a veiled threat to withhold its approval of the vote, and the White House, which said U.S. officials had hoped to change minds in Baghdad, welcomed the U- turn. Sunni politicians said it was positive, but quickly found other grounds for renewing their threat of a boycott.

The Shi'ite majority in the National Assembly insisted it acted by itself and not under pressure from the U.N.'s veiled warnings. It also said it might challenge results if voters appeared to be scared off by insurgents opposed to the process.

"They have reversed their decision as we had hoped they would," said U.N. spokesman Said Arikat in Baghdad.

"They should encourage broader political participation, and the vote today does that and we think that's positive," said Scott McClellan, spokesman for U.S. President George W. Bush.