Thursday, Sep 01, 2005
Grieving relatives on Thursday combed hospitals and morgues for missing loved ones as the nation grieved for about 1,000 Iraqis who died in Iraq's deadliest single incident since the March 2003 US-led invasion.
The victims suffocated or drowned after a stampede in Baghdad that had been reportedly triggered by rumours of a suicide bomber as Shia worshippers gathered to commemorate the death of a Shia holy figure at a nearby shrine.
The government declared three days of mourning, and President Jalal Talabani said the incident on the Imams' Bridge was "a great tragedy which will leave a scar on our souls.''
The tragedy is likely to inflame sectarian tensions in the run-up to an October 15 referendum on the constitution, which is likely to pit the main Shia and Kurdish parties who drafted the document against Sunni Arab politicians, possibly with the support of some radical Shia.
A key issue in the constitutional debate is whether the Shia areas of the country should have the right to form autonomous regions, which some Shia say is necessary for their security.
A spokesman for Iraq's interior minister said that most of the dead were women and children, many of whom had jumped or were pushed into the Tigris River.
"Huge crowds [were] on the bridge and the disaster happened when someone shouted that there is a suicide bomber on the bridge," said Abd al-Mutalib Mohammed, the health mininster, on state-run Iraqiya television.
''In moments it became a pile of humanity, screaming and calling for help,'' said Ali Jumaa, 22, a member of the Mahdi Army, a radical Shia religious organization involved in providing security for the event.
''Some jumped in the river and others were pushed, some drown and some were crushed together and their bones broken,'' Mr Jumaa said.
Television images showed hospital wards packed with bodies, covered with makeshift shrouds of foil or cloth.
Rescue workers said that their ambulances were unable to forge through the traffic, and many of the victims died on the way to the hospital.
Although police said that there had been no attack upon the bridge, tensions had been running high after a volley of mortar shells killed seven people inside the enclosure of the shrine of the Imam Moussa al-Kadhem, the focal point of the festival about a kilometer away.
Suicide bombers have struck numerous times at Shia mosques and religious processions, notably simultaneous attacks in March 2004 that killed over 180 people at the Kadhem shrine and in the holy city of Karbala. Despite the attacks, huge crowds continue to flock to these festivals, banned under Saddam Hussein, with estimates of Wednesday's attendance running into the hundreds of thousands.
The Imams' Bridge is a particularly congested spot, said police officials, with crowds returning from a visit to the shrine merging with other pilgrims en route to the holy place.
Previous incidents have not touched off large-scale reprisals, with senior Shia religious figures calling for restraint. The scale of the tragedy, however, could unleash reprisals that no religious leader will be able to stop.
Some Shia are treating the incident as though it were an insurgent attack, with one radio commentator placing responsibility on Iraqis ''who practice terrorism those who are silent about terrorism'' an apparent reference to Sunni communities accused of harbouring guerillas.
Sunni Arab, for their part, have in recent days accused the security forces, dominated by Shia political parties, of carrying out assassinations against their co-religionists.
Meanwhile, US warplanes reportedly killed up to 60 people in the far western region of al-Qaem on Tuesday in strikes which the military says were directed against insurgent safehouses.
Steve Negus, Iraq correspondent
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