By Abdelamir Hanoun

KARBALA, Dec 23, 2009 (AFP) - Nearly 50,000 soldiers and policemen will deploy to Iraq's central shrine cities of Karbala and Najaf this weekend to boost security for a major Shiite festival, army and police commanders said.

The beefed up presence is aimed at stopping attacks by Sunni insurgents who have previously targeted the two cities during Ashura, with around a million pilgrims expected in Karbala before the climax of the annual rituals on Sunday.

"We will deploy 20,000 soldiers and policemen in Karbala," the chief of military operations in the city, General Usman al-Ghanemi, said.

"There will be four security perimeters in the city, and four others in the old town close to the two shrines (of Imams Hussein and his half-brother Abbas)," he added.

Karbala is the principal site of the 10-day-long commemoration of the death of Imam Hussein at the hands of the armies of the Sunni caliph Yazid in 680 AD.

In nearby Najaf, where the shrine of Hussein's father Imam Ali is located, a further 26,000 security force members will be deployed.

To counter women suicide attackers who have struck Karbala before, Ghanemi said security forces had deployed 600 female security personnel on three roads into the city, along with bomb-sniffing dogs and explosives-detecting devices.

During Ashura in March 2004, near-simultaneous bombings at a Shiite mosque in Baghdad and in Karbala killed more than 170 people.

"The security plan also includes helicopters flying overhead and in the desert surrounding Karala to prevent mortars hitting pilgrims," Ghanemi said, adding that police will comb the city for explosives throughout the festival.

Security chiefs have also vowed to prevent any political exploitation of the festival as Iraq prepares to go to the polls for parliamentary elections on March 7.

Karbala police chief General Ali Jassim Mohammed said it was crucial that "this religious event be kept separate from politics and that we prevent it from being used in the electoral campaign."

"We will not allow photos of candidates, or political or religious leaders during the pilgrimage, or the chanting of sectarian slogans during the procession, and we have obtained guarantees on this subject from organisers," he said.

"Cameras have also been set up across the city and close to the shrines to monitor the movements of crowds of pilgrims."

Karbala provincial governor Amal Adin al-Her estimates that around one million worshippers will visit the city on Saturday and Sunday, including 60,000 pilgrims from the Gulf countries, Iran and Pakistan.

In Najaf, the head of the provincial council's security committee, Luay al-Yassiri, said the city would be closed to vehicule traffic from Thursday.

Ashura, which means tenth in Arabic, falls on the 10th day of the Muslim month of Muharram. The festival's climax this year falls on December 27.

Tradition holds that Hussein, a grandson of the Prophet Mohammed, was decapitated and his body mutilated by Yazid's armies.

To express remorse and guilt for not saving Hussein, Shiite volunteers flay themselves with chains or slice their scalps during processions to the Karbala shrines.

Shiites make up around 15 percent of Muslims worldwide. They form the majority populations in Iraq, Iran and Bahrain and form significant communities in Afghanistan, Lebanon, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.

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Copyright AFP 2009.