Mohammed Sawaf/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images The face of grief in Karbala on Saturday, after the second attack on a Shiite holy site there in two weeks.

Dozens Killed in Bomb Attack on Shiite Shrine

BAGHDAD, April 28 — A car bomber struck Saturday in Karbala, killing at least 58 people and wounding 169 in the second attack in two weeks against the city's holy sites, Iraqi police officials said.

The American military also announced that nine of its service members had been killed since Friday.

In Baghdad, the Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr sent a statement to Parliament berating President Bush, saying he had undermined democracy in Iraq and in the United States by failing to heed demands for a troop withdrawal.

The Karbala attack took place about a third of a mile from the Imam Abbas shrine, the second-holiest site in Shiite Islam, on a busy commercial street packed with shoppers.

Witnesses said flames shot several stories into the air, charring the victims, many of them women and children. "I saw a woman who was in a jewelry store when the bomb exploded," said Karim Nasser, 40, a watch vendor. "I saw her running, and she was on fire. Some people tried to put her out with a blanket, but she was dead."

The shrine was not damaged, the police said. Witnesses said at least 30 shops were destroyed.

Afterward, witnesses said an angry mob surrounded the home of the local governor. The city, mostly Shiite and ringed by checkpoints, has had less violence than other areas of Iraq. But the explosion on Saturday occurred only two weeks after another attack near the Imam Hussein shrine that killed 36 people and wounded 168.

Taken together, the two attacks suggested that Sunni extremists, who set off a wave of intense sectarian violence by destroying a Shiite mosque in Samarra last year, are determined to elicit a violent response from militias like Mr. Sadr's Mahdi Army.

So far, Mr. Sadr has urged his followers to refrain from retaliating. That restraint, and the setting for his statement, read aloud by a political ally in Parliament in grave, almost liturgical language, seemed to reinforce the idea that Mr. Sadr is increasingly trying to leave his rabble-rousing image behind.

In the statement, addressed to President Bush, Mr. Sadr referred to an April 9 protest that he had organized. "The Iraqi people, from all sects, have revolted and walked to Najaf, demanding that you leave, and you didn't listen. The nations all over the world marched in demonstrations and the voices of your nation have yelled, asking you to leave Iraq and you ignored them."

"And here," the statement added, "are the Democrats calling upon you to pull out or even to establish a timetable, but you were obstinate. The calls extended to the Republicans, the group you belong to, and Congress and your government who you appointed, and you didn't listen to them.

"Let us not forget the screams and wailing of your soldiers, as if they are bereaved children, calling upon you, 'Get us out of Iraq, otherwise we are dead, O Bush, we want to get back to our land and families.' But you ignored them."

The American deaths announced Saturday occurred in Anbar Province and south of Baghdad. Three soldiers and two marines were killed Friday in Anbar. On Saturday morning, two patrols were hit by roadside bombs roughly an hour apart south of Baghdad. The first killed three soldiers and wounded one; the second killed one soldier and wounded two.