A look at Ashoura around the world

Shiite Muslims on Tuesday marked Ashoura, commemorating the death in A.D. 680 of Imam Hussein, the son of Ali, the Prophet Muhammad's cousin, who Shiites believe should have been his rightful successor. Hussein was killed in a battle with the forces of what would become the mainstream Sunni branch of Islam. In Ashoura rites, Shiites march in large processions, beating their chests _ and sometimes cutting themselves with blades _ to mourn Hussein. Events on Ashoura around the Islamic world:

IRAQ: Bombs struck Shiite ceremonies in the cities of Mandali and Khanaqin, and gunmen fired on Shiites marking Ashoura in Baghdad in attacks that killed dozens of people. Tens of thousands of Shiites marched to the southern city of Karbala, site of the battle where Hussein was killed.

PAKISTAN: An attack on an Ashoura procession sparked gunfire that killed two Sunni Muslims in the town of Peshawar on the Afghan border. In the past three days, at least two suicide attacks in northwestern Pakistan have struck Shiite gatherings. Mainly Sunni Pakistan has long been plagued by violence between its Shiite and Sunni communities.

LEBANON: Tens of thousands of Shiites marched in Beirut's southern suburbs and in southern Lebanon. In a speech to followers in the capital, the leader of the Shiite Hezbollah movement, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, accused President Bush of seeking to ignite civil war in Lebanon. Shiites are believed to make up about a third of Lebanon's 4 million people.

IRAN: Men wept for Hussein as they marched through Tehran, and children carried cradles as a reminder of his infant son, who also was killed in the Karbala battle. In the town of Bijar, marchers covered themselves in mud to show grief. Since the time of the late Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, clerics in Iran _ which is overwhelmingly Shiite _ have barred the spilling of blood in the Ashoura rites.

SAUDI ARABIA: Men drenched in blood from self-inflicted sword wounds passed through the streets of the eastern town of Awwamiya, but in other nearby towns, Shiites refrained from bloodletting on orders of clerics. Saudi Arabia's Shiite minority often complain of discrimination in a kingdom where the Wahhabi interpretation of Sunni Islam considers them infidels.

BAHRAIN: Some 15,000 people paraded through the capital, Manama, in the Gulf island nation, where some 70 percent of the 450,000 citizens are Shiite _ the only Arab nation besides Iraq with a Shiite majority, though Bahrain's leadership is Sunni.