Good Friday flagellants face rabies risk

Dozens of men who whipped and cut their backs for a gory Good Friday ceremony in the Philippines risk contracting rabies after a fellow flagellant died of the virus earlier this month.

The men shared a blade to rip their skin before flaying it to a pulp with a bamboo whip in the northern province of Pampanga. The ritual, which also involves voluntary crucifixions, is meant to mark the suffering of Jesus Christ.

Dr Maria Clara Aquino, a government doctor in Pampanga, said Tuesday that anti-rabies vaccines had been give to 103 people who could have been exposed to the virus.

Bombs kill nearly 200

Car bombs killed nearly 200 people in Baghdad on Wednesday in the deadliest attacks in the city since U.S. and Iraqi forces launched a security crackdown aimed at halting the country's slide into civil war.

One car bomb alone in the mainly Shi'ite Sadriya neighborhood killed 140 people and wounded 150, police said, making it the worst insurgent bomb attack in Baghdad since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.

"The street was transformed into a swimming pool of blood," Ahmed Hameed, a shopkeeper near the scene, told Reuters.