(Recasts with two suicide bombers)

By Habib al-Zubaidi

HILLA, Iraq, March 6 (Reuters) - Insurgents killed 82 Shi'ite pilgrims walking to the holy city of Kerbala in attacks across Iraq on Tuesday, police said.

In the worst incident, two suicide bombers strapped with explosives walked into a roadside tent near the city of Hilla, south of Baghdad, killing 47 people and wounding 117, police said. The pilgrims had gathered inside the tent to eat and rest on their way to Kerbala, police said.

The attacks are likely to increase sectarian tensions between majority Shi'ites and Sunni Arabs that have threatened to plunge the country into all-out civil war. Police said 237 pilgrims were wounded in total.

Insurgents also launched attacks against Shi'ite pilgrims in and around Baghdad. A car bomb in the southern Baghdad district of Doura killed 12, police said.

Streams of Shi'ite pilgrims are heading to Kerbala to commemorate Arbain, the end of a 40-day mourning period since Ashura, which marks the death of Prophet Mohammad's grandson in 680. Sunni rebels have targeted Shi'ite pilgrims in what U.S. and Iraqi officials say is a campaign to spark communal war.

U.S. military commanders had warned that militants may launch assaults outside Baghdad, where more than 90,000 Iraqi and U.S. troops have intensified operations to rein in violence

The U.S. military announced on Tuesday the death of nine U.S. soldiers in two bomb attacks north of Baghdad, the deadliest day for U.S. forces since they launched the security crackdown in the capital three weeks ago.

In the worst of Monday's two attacks against U.S. forces, six soldiers were killed and three were wounded by a blast near their vehicles in Salahaddin province, a Sunni Arab insurgent stronghold north of Baghdad.

In a separate incident, three U.S. soldiers were killed and one wounded by another blast near their vehicles in Diyala province, northeast of Baghdad.

More than 3,185 U.S. soldiers have died in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003. (Writing by Ibon Villelabeitia, editing by Elizabeth Piper)

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