Terrorists opened fire on a group of Shiites who were on their way to a major Shiite religious festival in Southern Iraq.

The attackers opened fire near Mahaweel, 35 miles south of Baghdad, leaving one person dead and injuring two others, police Capt. Muthana al-Furati said. Attacks Monday left four dead, including two police officers trying to protect pilgrims from attackers.

The Shiites were among thousands filling roads on their way to Karbala to celebrate the al-Arbaeen religious festival Thursday.

This is the same exact tactic terrorist groups have used in Iraq over the past two years; targeting Shiite pilgrims in transit or at religious ceremonies. Once it was believed that the terrorists were trying to target Shiites to ignite a civil war, however I cannot make any sense of this continued targeting of innocent Shiites, some of which are not even Iraqi.

There were three reported bombings during the Shiite celebration of Ashura this year and a few last year during the same time. This attack should concern Shiites who plan on celebrating al-Arbaeen which is scheduled for tomorrow.

The Associated Press has a very brief snippet of news concerning attacks in Iraq. The AP reports the targeting of Iraqis as a “different tactic,” though I’m not sure what they feel is different about it. Over the past few months I’ve documented on this site several times that the terrorists main target of choice evolved from the Coalition soldiers to the Iraqi civilians. The overall attacks have gone down, which has also been documented on this site before, as have the attacks on U.S. forces.

There are several reasons why the attacks have gone down as have the attacks against the U.S. soldiers. More and more terrorists leaders are being rounded up and arrested on a weekly, if not daily, basis. The old terrorist stronghold of Fallujah has now been clensed of Jihadis and Baathist Party insurgents and has been described as one of the more safe cities in Iraq. Each time either terrorists or insurgents targeted U.S. forces, their casualty rates were much to high to sustain and actively keep up a valient fight. The United States, with the help of many nations including NATO, have trained over 150,000 Iraqi soldiers which are now taking on more responsiblity to secure rougher areas of Iraq.

All of these are reasons why attacks against U.S. soldiers have dwindled and I do expect this trend to continue in the future. The Iraqi National Guard is becoming much more involved in securing Iraq leaving the U.S. military to serve on a supporting role rather than the other way around.