The Iraqi Governing Council (IGC) announced Wednesday that it will formally sign a newly-drafted basic law on Friday, following three-day mourning for the victims of the simultaneous bombings on Ashura festival.

The IGC had hoped to issue the law, which will serve as an interim constitution in transitional period until a permanent one is in place, on Wednesday, Mohammed Bahr al-Uloum, the rotating IGC president for March, told a press conference

He said the delay was made to respect the mourning period declared by the council on Tuesday.

Dramatic attacks had ruined the Ashura festival, Shiite Muslim's holiest day, with suicide bombings and mortar shelling targeting a Shiite shrine in Baghdad and two mosques in Karbala on Tuesday morning.

According to Uloum, 271 people had been killed in the coordinated bombings, a figure much higher than that put by US military and Iraqi Health Ministry earlier.

The US-installed IGC on Monday overcame major differences to reach an agreement on the final text of the basic law, an important step demanded by the US-sponsored power-transfer timetable.

(Xinhua News Agency March 4, 2004)