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Snipers watch over pilgrims
27/02/2008 18:05 - (SA)
Kerbala - Snipers and bomb squads were among 40 000 Iraqi police and soldiers deployed around southern Iraq's holy Shi'ite city of Kerbala on Wednesday to watch over millions of pilgrims gathered to observe Arbaeen.
Shi'ites have been travelling by foot to observe the annual rite which is a major test for Iraqi security forces after suspected Sunni Arab insurgents killed 149 pilgrims last year.
Kerbala police chief Major-General Raad Shakir said as many as 7 million pilgrims were expected to be in Kerbala by late on Wednesday, a day before Arbaeen reaches its climax.
Aerial pictures of the sprawling city showed a sea of black-clad pilgrims filling the wide avenues and narrow backstreets of the city, 110 km south of Baghdad.
"We spent 13 days walking before we arrived yesterday," said 41-year-old Mohammed Salam, who came from southern Basra with his wife, three daughters and two sons.
"The road was secured and there were places to eat, although we were worried about suicide bombers or roadside bombs ... but this is a dream that came true, thank God."
Arbaeen marks the end of a 40-day mourning period following Ashura, the religious ritual that commemorates the death of the Prophet Mohammad's grandson Imam Hussein in 680.
Such gatherings have been a target in the past for Sunni Islamist al-Qaeda, which considers Shi'ites heretics. Shi'ites form a majority in Iraq but a minority in the Muslim world.
A suspected al-Qaeda suicide bomber killed 63 Arbaeen pilgrims in Iskandariya just south of Baghdad on Sunday. Another pilgrim was killed by a roadside bomb in eastern Baghdad on Wednesday, police said, while three more died on Monday.
Shakir said the 40 000-strong security presence in and around Kerbala, backed by tanks and aircraft, would include 400 snipers on the city's rooftops as well as 12 bomb squad teams.
He said 3 000 police, many armed with tear gas and backed by water cannons, would be deployed between the two golden-domed Imam Hussein and Imam Abbas mosques in the centre of Kerbala's old city where observances are centred.
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