WASHINGTON – Shiite political leaders in Iraq yesterday urged calm in the wake of deadly car bomb attacks in the holy cities of Najaf and Karbala.

Suicide bombers detonated their devices yesterday near two mosques commemorating the main martyrs of the Shiite faith, Hussein and Ali, in blasts that have killed at least 62 and injured more than 120, according to wire reports. The attacks come six weeks before Iraqis are scheduled to go to the polls to elect a transitional assembly that will choose a prime minister to replace Ayad Allawi, who was in London over the weekend. If Iraqis vote according to the country’s ethnic breakdown, Shiites should command at least 60% of the votes in Parliament next year.

A leading Shiite cleric, Mohammad Bahr al-Uloum, told the Reuters news agency that he and other leaders warned against taking revenge and were still committed to the election for a transitional national assembly scheduled for January 30.

“They are trying to ignite a sectarian civil war and prevent elections from going ahead on time. They have failed before and they will fail again,” Mr. al-Uloum told the news agency. “The Shiites are committed not to respond with violence, which will only lead to violence. We are determined on elections and Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani has made this clear.”

Mr. al-Uloum was a member of the Iraqi Governing Council, which advised the coalition provisional authority. Like many leaders in the majority Shiite community, he is pursuing a political path to secure the ascendancy of his religious sect in Iraq. Leaders of the two major Iranian-backed parties, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq and Dawa, have called for restraint in responding to the attacks, which most Shiite leaders blame on Saudi-inspired terrorists. Even the onetime outlaw ayatollah Muqtada al-Sadr – whose militia fought American soldiers in Najaf this summer – told reporters through an intermediary that seeking revenge for the murderous bombings was unwise.

Earlier in Baghdad, three election workers were dragged from their cars and assassinated by terrorists.

The two car bombs appeared coordinated to go off at roughly the same time yesterday around 2 p.m. Baghdad time. The governor of Najaf told the Associated Press that he witnessed the attacks while observing a funeral procession. Closely timed explosions in different locations is a hallmark technique of Al Qaeda, which leveled the American embassies in Tanzania and Kenya in 1998 in explosions only minutes apart and managed to crash commercial airplanes into the Pentagon and World Trade Center within minutes on September 11, 2001.

Earlier this year, American soldiers found a communication intended for Al Qaeda’s leadership from the Jordanian Al Qaeda sympathizer, Abu-Musab Zarqawi, laying out his plan to turn the Shiites against the Sunnis by attacking them and hoping to provoke a response. In the letter, translated on the CPA’s Web site, Mr. Zarqawi writes that “targeting and hitting them in [their] religious, political, and military depth will provoke them to show the Sunnis their rabies.” His plan, he says, is to take over the leadership of a vanquished Sunni-based insurgency.

Iraqi border guards detained 45 men who were attempting to cross into Iraq from Iran. The Associated Press said the men did not have proper identity documents, and claimed to be Iranian, Afghan, and Bangladeshi. American soldiers said they captured eight more Iraqis near the scene fleeing the placement of an exploded roadside bomb.

The Iran-Iraq border since the fall of Saddam Hussein has been open to Iranians making pilgrimages to Najaf and Karbala, although most American intelligence and military officials have concluded that Iranian agents have taken advantage of the situation and heavily infiltrated Iraq.

Over the weekend, Iraq’s defense minister, Hazem Shaalan, accused the Iranians of having undue influence behind the Shiite political slate formed earlier this month.

Indeed, Mr. Shaalan told Agence France-Presse that a leading candidate for prime minister from the Shiite caucus, Hussein al-Shahrastani, was an Iranian agent. Mr. al-Shahrastani was in charge of Iraq’s nuclear weapons program, but began cooperating covertly with American intelligence officers as early as December 2002.

The leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, dismissed the statements from the defense minister to reporters after meeting with Grand Ayatollah Sistani yesterday.