By Xinhua
Baghdad : The death toll from a suicide bombing in Iraq’s Shiite holy city of Karbala on Monday rose to 35, with 55 others wounded, an interior ministry source said.
A female suicide attacker detonated explosives in a market near the shrine of Imam Hussein in Karbala, about 110 km south of Baghdad, the source said.
The source said Iranians are among the casualties.
An early report put the toll at 10 killed and 30 wounded.
The explosion came as U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney paid a surprise visit to Iraq earlier in the day.
Suicide bombings involving women have been increasing recently. A female suicide bomber was blamed for one of the bloody attacks against two Baghdad markets in early February which killed nearly100 people.
On March 10, a woman suicide bomber detonated her explosive vest, killing a Sunni tribal leader in the Diyala province.
The U.S. military said early this year that violence had dropped by about 60 percent since last June. However, a string of attacks struck the country over the past three months, raising concerns that violence could make a comeback.