Timeline: Major Attacks on Shiites

Some of the major insurgent attacks on Shiite targets in Iraq:

— Jan. 21: A car bomb explodes outside a Shiite mosque in Baghdad packed with worshippers celebrating a major Muslim holiday, and a homicide driver blew up an ambulance at the wedding of a Shiite couple south of the capital. At least 21 people died and dozens were wounded — including the bride and groom.

— Jan. 13: A homicide car bomber attacks a Shiite Muslim community center in Khan Bani Saad (search), killing three people and wounding eight.

— Jan. 12: Sheik Mahmoud Finjan, a Shiite cleric and representative of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani (search), is shot dead in the town of Salman Pak, as he returned home home from a mosque. His son and four bodyguards were also killed.

— Jan. 6: The bodies of 18 young Iraqi Shiites are found near the volatile northern city of Mosul. The men were taken off a bus and executed in December while seeking work at a U.S. base.

— Dec. 27: Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, head of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (search) — the country's most powerful Shiite political group — escapes a car bomb attack that kills and wounds several of his guards.

— Dec. 20: A bomb explodes at a police checkpoint in the Shiite holy city of Karbala, damaging buildings but causing no casualties.

— Dec. 19: Car bombs tear through a Najaf funeral procession and Karbala's main bus station, killing at least 60 people and wounding more than 120 in the two Shiite holy cities.

— Dec. 15: A bomb targeting a prominent Shiite cleric kills seven people outside of one of southern Iraq's holiest shrines. The attack wounds the cleric, Sheik Abdul Mahdi al-Karbalayee.

— Dec. 3: Insurgents launch two major attacks against a Shiite mosque and a police station in Baghdad, killing 30 people, including at least 16 police officers. The Shiite mosque was in the Baghdad neighborhood of Azamiyah, a Sunni Muslim stronghold, where 14 were killed and 19 wounded.

— March 2: homicide bombers set off simultaneous attacks on a Shiite Muslim shrine crowded with pilgrims in two Iraqi cities, killing at least 143 people and turning the holiest day on the Shiite calendar into the bloodiest since the fall of Saddam Hussein. Unofficial reports put the toll in Baghdad and Karbala as high as 223. At least 430 were wounded.

— Aug. 29, 2003: A car bomb explodes outside a mosque in the Shiite Muslim holy city of Najaf, killing more than 85 people, including Shiite leader Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim.