The future of Iraq depends on a battle between good and evil, the prime minister said yesterday.

Tony Blair was speaking in Downing Street after a series of explosions in Karbala and Baghdad resulted in over 170 deaths.

Over 400 people were injured by what appeared to be a coordinated series of attacks on Iraqi Shias as they celebrated the climax of a holy ritual.

Blair said the worshippers had been exercising their new religious freedoms and had been killed in a "cruel and evil way".

He said the "vast majority" of Iraqis wanted a free, stable, prosperous and democratic nation.

"If there is any clearer struggle between good and evil, it is between those on the one hand who want to build Iraq as a decent country - in which people from whatever religious quarter can live together in freedom and in peace on the one hand - and on the other those who would destroy that and replace that by religious hatred," said the premier.