Violence as millions mark Ashura

2008-01-19 20:59

Karbala, Iraq - Millions of Shiites across Iraq on Saturday joined ceremonies marking the climax of annual Ashura rituals, marred by attacks that killed 17 people and a bloody uprising by doomsday cultists.

Around two million people thronged the streets of the shrine city of Karbala in central Iraq for the main rituals commemorating the slaying of the revered Imam Hussein by the armies of the Sunni caliph Yazid in 680, provincial governor Akil al-Khazali told a news conference.

"There have been no security violations ... and the ceremonies have gone ahead without incident," he added, as buses began ferrying the crowds of pilgrims home even before the conclusion of the 10-day event.

The governor had earlier in the week announced the deployment of some 20 000 security force members in and around Karbala, about 100 kilometres south of Baghdad.

A spate of violence elsewhere in the country, however, took the gloss off the largely peaceful Karbala pilgrimage, which in recent years has been attacked by Sunni insurgents and disrupted by intra-Shiite fighting.

In northern Iraq, where US commanders say al-Qaeda jihadists have set up their strongholds after being chased out of Baghdad and surrounding belts, separate roadside bomb and rocket attacks killed nine people, officials said.

In northeastern Tal Afar, insurgents sent a Katyusha rocket scudding into a crowd observing Ashura, killing seven people and wounding 20, Mayor Najim Abdallah told AFP.

In the northern city of Kirkuk, two people were killed and seven wounded in a roadside bomb attack on an Ashura event, police said.

As evening fell, a bomb exploded in a restaurant in the Shiite slum of Sadr City in eastern Baghdad, killing two people and wounding 12, a security official said.

And in Ramadi, capital of western Anbar province, two suicide bombers blew themselves up inside two police posts killing six policemen and wounding 13.

The explosive vest of a third suicide bomber who attacked another police post in the village of Obeid, on the northern outskirts of Ramadi, failed to detonate and he was arrested, a security official told AFP.

Drenched in blood

Processions in Karbala, which began with thousands of devotees drenched in blood after ritually slicing their scalps, ended with a re-enactment of the battle for Karbala in 680 in which the revered Imam Hussein was killed.

Processions were held through the streets, including by those engaging in the scalp-slicing rite of "tatbir" and others who took to self-flagellation to mourn the death of Hussein.

Most of the violence linked to this year's Ashura, meanwhile, was attributed to a Shiite messianic sect led by a shadowy figure known as Ahmed al-Hassani al-Yamani.

Officials said fighters of Yamani's cult, their yellow headbands bearing the Star of David, rose up on Friday simultaneously in the southern port city of Basra and in Nasiriyah, about 350 kilometres south of Baghdad.

Fighting raged through the afternoon in both cities, during which officials said police posts and several Ashura processions were attacked by cultists wielding machineguns and assault rifles.

The clashes died down in Basra during the night but continued sporadically in Nasiriyah.

A police official in Nasiriyah said Iraq's security forces raided hideouts of the doomsday cultists at daybreak on Saturday, flushing them out of a mosque and houses they had occupied in Al-Salhiyah suburb and ending the uprising.

Police officials said at least 35 cultists were killed in Basra and 18 in Nasiriyah. A total of 12 police, two Iraqi soldiers and three civilians were also killed.

Followers of the cult seek to hasten the return of Imam Mahdi, an eighth century imam who vanished as a boy and whom Shiites believe will return to bring justice to the world.

During Ashura last January, another militant sect dubbing itself the Jund al-Samaa, or "Soldiers of Heaven," clashed with US and Iraqi forces outside Karbala and another holy Shiite city, Najaf, leaving 263 sect followers dead.

- AFP