Baghdad's Shias Bury Their Dead

Staff and agencies
Thursday September 1, 2005

Thousands of people today attended the first funerals of the hundreds of Shia pilgrims killed in a stampede across a Baghdad bridge.
Panic spread through the crowd packed on to the al-Aima bridge during a religious procession yesterday when a shout was apparently heard that a suicide bomber was in their midst.

Hundreds of people were crushed in the chaos while others fell into the Tigris and drowned after a railing on the bridge collapsed.

Many of those killed were women and children, but there are conflicting reports on how many people actually died in the stampede. Iraq's interior ministry said today 953 people had died and 815 had been injured in the crush, but Qassim Yahya, a spokesman for the health ministry, said 843 had been killed and 439 injured.

The Iraqi prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafair, declared three days of mourning. The stampede is believed to be the biggest loss of life at such an event since more than 1,400 pilgrims died at Mecca during the hajj in 1990.

Hundreds of people were still searching the river and Baghdad hospitals for their relatives today. Many of the bodies have been left on the floor outside the Iman Ali hospital as the morgue there is already full.

Many families erected large tents on the streets of Sadr City, a traditional place to mourn the dead. Some of those were being taken for burial to a cemetery in the holy Shia city of Najaf.

The stampede has deepened political tensions in Iraq, with critics saying the Shia-led government could have done more to prevent the tragedy.

Baha al-Aaraji, a Shia MP and supporter of the radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, said: "This is a result of the inadequate performance of the interior and defence ministers, which has caused such a loss of life.

"They should stand in front of the national assembly and be questioned. If it is proven that they have failed to fulfil their responsibilities, they should be dismissed and stand trial."

The government said Sunni insurgents had instigated the disaster by spreading the rumours of a suicide bomber, but many survivors said they had heard nothing about an imminent attack, and blamed the authorities for mishandling the vast gathering.

Witnesses said some Sunnis, from the Azamiyah district on the eastern bank, jumped into the river and risked their lives to rescue pilgrims yesterday.

Some reports said up to 1 million people converged on Kadhimiya, a Shia district in northern Baghdad, for the annual commemoration of the death, in the eighth century, of Moussa al-Kadhim, one of Shia Islam's 12 revered imams.

Several mortars were fired at the crowd surrounding the shine, killing seven and wounding dozens, before the stampede happened.

Also today, Iraq executed three convicted murderers in the government's first use of the death penalty since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003.

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