BAGHDAD, Iraq – Two huge car bombs tore through the holy Shiite cities of Karbala and Najaf on Sunday, killing at least 62 people and injuring more than 120 in what appeared to be coordinated attacks aimed at terrorizing the Shiite south of the country ahead of elections scheduled for January.

In Baghdad, gunmen dragged three election officials from their car in broad daylight and shot them.

The day’s violence left little doubt that the next six weeks until the Jan. 30 election will be bloody, as U.S. and Iraqi officials have warned.

Shiite leaders blamed Sunni insurgents for what they described as an attempt to ignite civil war, while former dictator Saddam Hussein issued an appeal from his prison cell for Iraqis to unite against what he called an American plot to divide the country, fueling fears that the election will split the country along sectarian lines.

The first explosion came shortly after 1:30 p.m. in Karbala, 70 miles south of Baghdad, when a car bomb exploded at a busy bus terminal in the city center, killing 14 and injuring 30.

A little more than an hour later and 30 miles away, a car exploded on a crowded market square in Najaf, killing 48 and injuring more than 90.

The timing of the two attacks and their location, in town centers crowded with civilians, suggested a broader attempt to strike fear into Iraq’s majority Shiite community, which is looking forward to an election likely to produce a Shiite-dominated government for the first time in the country’s history.

The explosions occurred in the vicinity of the two holiest shrines in the Shiite world, the mosque of the Imam Hussein in Karbala, and the mosque of his father, Imam Ali, in Najaf.

Hussein’s failed claim to the legacy of his father and of the Prophet Muhammad in 680 precipitated the schism between the Shiite and Sunni branches of Islam.

The Najaf explosion occurred just after the funeral of a tribal leader had concluded nearby. Several leading government figures, including Najaf’s pro-American governor, attended the funeral, but none was hurt.

Shocked citizens surveyed the twisted wreckage of cars and storefronts in Najaf’s Maidan Square, not far from the mosque that had been the focus of a bloody confrontation last summer between U.S. forces and Shiite militia loyal to rebel cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

“This tragedy makes us more insistent to go to vote, even if they attack us,” said Hawra Ali Musa, 27, a housewife who lives near the shrine.

There was no claim of responsibility, but officials said the spectacular style of the attacks pointed to the Sunni insurgents who have been waging a daily campaign against targets associated with the Iraqi government, its security forces and the U.S. military in the Sunni Triangle north and west of Baghdad.

A spokesman for al-Sadr, who has called off his anti-U.S. attacks to allow the election to proceed, blamed the current violence on Saddam loyalists, followers of the Saudi-based fundamentalist Wahhabi sect, and terrorist groups liked that of Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

“They are trying to sow instability and destroy the peace in southern Iraq,” said al-Sadr’s spokesman, Ali al-Yasseri.

“Karbala and Najaf are stable. They are ready to vote, so the terrorists targeted these cities,” he said. “The insurgents want to show that there is no province of Iraq that is stable and no city they cannot strike.”

Official launch

The bombings came four days after the official launch of Iraq’s election campaign and at the end of a weekend that saw the insurgency shift its attention toward voting-related targets, firing mortars at election offices and targeting election officials. A bomb last Wednesday in Karbala that killed eight people presaged the insurgents’ push into the Shiite south, which has been largely peaceful since the fighting in Najaf ended last August.

The killings of the election officials on Baghdad’s Haifa Street illustrated the dangers confronting Iraqis attempting to organize the vote.

Five election workers in a car apparently were headed to work at around 9 a.m. along the street, a known insurgent stronghold, when about 30 gunmen fired on their vehicle, forcing it to stop. Two people in the car managed to escape, said Iraq’s election commission. But the gunmen pulled three workers out of the vehicle, forced them to kneel, then shot them dead in front of horrified motorists, according to witnesses and the electoral commission.

One of those killed was the deputy head of western Baghdad’s election office.

Heart of Baghdad

The brazen attack underscored the ease with which insurgents operate in the heart of Baghdad, barely a mile from the fortified Green Zone where the U.S. embassy and interim Iraqi government are holed up. Photographs of the incident by The Associated Press showed the gunmen moving freely in the street, unmasked and unafraid.

Saddam’s appeal to his countrymen was delivered by his lawyers at a news conference in Jordan, days after one of his lawyers had been granted permission to meet his client for the first time.

“The president warned the people of Iraq and the Arabs to beware of the American scheme aimed at splitting Iraq into sectarian and religious divisions,” said Bushra Khalil, a Lebanese lawyer on the team of attorneys defending Saddam, according to an Associated Press report from Amman.

Saddam is in good spirits and good health, said his lead attorney, Ziad al Khasawneh, who debriefed Khalil al Duleimi, the Iraqi lawyer who met Saddam last Thursday, in Amman on Saturday.

Also Sunday, Arab television stations aired footage supplied by a militant group of 10 abducted Iraqi employees of the Sandi Group, an American company supplying logistical and security services in Iraq. Masked militants in the tape said the men would be killed unless the company pulled out of Iraq.

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(Chicago Tribune special correspondent Hassan al Jarrah contributed to this report from Najaf.)