SAM F GHATTAS in Beirut

Hizbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah chose the holy day of Ashura yesterday to tell Shias in Beirut that US President George W Bush was seeking to spark a civil war in Lebanon.

His comments came a day after Bush implicitly accused the Iranian-backed Shi'ite Hizbollah of creating chaos in Lebanon and said it should be called to account.

Hizbollah-led protests sparked a wave of violence in Lebanon last week.

Nasrallah spoke before a crowd of tens of thousands marking the killing of a seventh century Shi'ite saint, Imam Hussein.

He said: "The ones who fomented chaos in Lebanon, who destroyed Lebanon, who killed women and children, old and young in Lebanon, are George Bush and (Secretary of State) Condoleezza Rice, who ordered the Zionists to launch the war on Lebanon."

He was referring to last summer's 34-day Israel-Hizbollah war.

Bush wants to punish Hizbollah "because you stood fast and were victorious" in the war, the cleric told his supporters. "When the greatest Satan declares his enmity and his war against us, this is a great honour of which we are proud."

Bush has stepped up his denunciations of Hizbollah in recent weeks, blasting the group as "Shi'ite extremists" in his State of the Union address and saying the group was second only to al Qaeda in the number of Americans it has killed - a reference to attacks on US Marines in Lebanon in the 1980s.

Bush has also said the US will act to stem Iranian support for Hizbollah and for Shi'ite militants in Iraq, part of an American campaign to contain Tehran's growing influence in the troubled region.

Shia worshippers in three Iraqi cities yesterday suffered bombings and ambushes, killing at least 39 people, during the climax of ceremonies marking Ashura.

In apparent retaliation, mortar shells slammed into Sunni neighbourhoods in Baghdad, killing at least five people and wounding 20.

Meanwhile, tens of thousands of Shia Muslims converged on the holy city of Karbala under tight security, beating their chests and heads to mark the holy day.

The entire city was sealed off and pilgrims were searched at numerous checkpoints.

All vehicles including bicycles were banned.

The bloodiest attack yesterday occurred when a suicide bomber blew himself up among a crowd of worshippers entering a Shia mosque.

The attack killed 19 people and wounded a further 54 in Mandali, a predominantly Shi'ite city north-east of Baghdad and close to the Iranian border.

To the north, a bomb in a rubbish bin exploded as scores of Shias - most of them Kurds - were performing rituals in Khanaqin, a majority Kurdish city also near the Iranian border. At least 13 people were killed and 39 were wounded.

The two bombings occurred on the edge of Diyala province, not far from Baquba, where fighting has raged for weeks between Sunni insurgents, Shia militiamen and US-Iraqi troops.

Gunmen in two cars opened fire on a minibus carrying Shia pilgrims in the capital, killing at least seven people and wounding seven others.

In ceremonies to mark Ashura in Pakistan, an explosion next to a pre-dawn procession provoked an outburst of shooting that killed two Sunni Muslims in the western town of Hangu.

Ashura ceremonies in Saudi Arabia and Iran also took place amid an atmosphere of tension.

In Bahrain, which with Iraq is one of two Arab countries with a Shia majority, about 15,000 people marched through the capital Manama before dawn chanting praise for Imam Hussein.

A spokesman for the ceremony said hundreds of Shias from Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Oman and the United Arab Emirates had taken part.-AP