Supreme Leader: US liable for Iranian Pilgrims death

On Friday, back to back deadly bombings rocked Kazimiyyah, a small town in Baghdad, where two Shia Imam's lie at rest, killing 60 people, 10 of them Iranians.

The double bombing followed a Thursday blast at a restaurant in the vicinity of Muqdadiya in the restive province of Diyala where another 53 Iranians lost their lives.

"The main suspects in this crime and crimes similar to that are American security and military forces who ruthlessly occupied the Muslim country under the umbrella of 'war on terrorism'," Ayatollah Khamenei said on Saturday.

In a statement, the Leader said the US forces "have massacred tens of thousands of people and made the country more insecure on a daily basis."

"The growth of the poisonous grass of terrorism in Iraq will definitely be written in America's criminal record and American and "Israeli" intelligence bodies are the first suspects of that," Ayatollah Khamenei added.

Bomb attacks and fighting continue to take a heavy toll on Iraq five years after the US-led invasion of the oil-rich country.

A study conducted by ORB -- a well-known British polling agency which has been tracking public opinion in Iraq since 2005 -- estimated in September 2007 that 1.2 million Iraqis had been killed in violence-related incidents following the March 2003 invasion of the country.

This is while Human Rights Watch estimates put the number of those killed during a period of twenty years of the reign of deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein at 250,000 to 290,000.