Pilgrimage stampede kills nearly 700

Panic engulfed thousands of Shiites marching across a bridge in a religious procession today after rumours spread that a suicide bomber was about to attack, triggering a stampede that killed at least 695 people.

It was the single biggest confirmed loss of life in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion.

Scores jumped or were pushed to their deaths into the Tigris River, but many were crushed in the crowd, which had jammed up at a security checkpoint on the western side of the Azamiyah bridge. Most of the dead were women and children, Interior Ministry spokesman Lt Col Adnan Abdul-Rahman said.

Tensions already had been running high in the procession to the shrine in Baghdad’s heavily Shiite Kazimiyah district because of a mortar attack two hours earlier against the site. The shrine was about a mile from the bridge.

Health Ministry spokesman Qassim Yahya said the casualty toll was 695 dead and 180 injured. Figures from other official sources varied somewhat because survivors were rushed in ambulances and private cars to many hospitals, and officials were scrambling to compile accurate casualty figures.

Defence Minister Saadoun al-Dulaimi said the huge Shiite procession had jammed up at a security checkpoint on the western end of the bridge, which was closed months ago to prevent movement by extremists from the Sunni neighbourhood on one side of the river to the Shiite district on the other.

“We were on the bridge. It was so crowded. Thousands of people were surrounding me,” said survivor Fadhel Ali, 28, barefoot and soaking wet. “We heard that a suicide attacker was among the crowd. Everybody was yelling, so I jumped from the bridge into the river, swam and reached the bank. I saw women, children and old men falling after me into the water.”

Health Minister Abdul-Mutalib Mohammed told state-run Iraqiya television that there were “huge crowds on the bridge and the disaster happened when someone shouted that there is a suicide bomber on the bridge.”

“This led to a state of panic among the pilgrims and they started to push each other and there was many cases of suffocation,” he said.

Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, a Shiite, declared a three-day mourning period.

Thousands of people rushed to both banks of the river to search for survivors, and bare-chested men jumped in to try to recover bodies.

At the chaotic hospitals, scores of bodies covered with white sheets lay on the sidewalk outside in the baking summer heat because morgues was so jammed. Many of them were women in black gowns, as well as children and old men.

Sobbing relatives wandered amid the bodies, lifting the sheets to try to identify their kin. When they found them, they would shriek in grief, pound their chests or collapse to the ground, sobbing.

Hundreds of thousands of Shiites had been marching across the bridge, which links a Sunni and Shiite neighbourhood, heading for the tomb of Imam Mousa al-Kadhim, a 9th century Shiite saint.

Television reports said about 1 million pilgrims from Baghdad and outlying provinces had gathered near the shrine in the capital’s Kazimiyah district for the annual commemoration of the saint’s death.

Shiite processions, which can draw huge crowds, are often targeted by Sunni extremists seeking to trigger sectarian war, so worshippers are on guard for trouble. Shiite politicians encourage huge turnouts as a demonstration of the majority sect’s power.

Al-Dulaimi, the defence minister and a Sunni, said three suicide bombers were arrested today heading toward Kazimiyah but “they blew themselves up before reaching their destination.

First reports suggested that the bridge’s railing collapsed, but TV video showed the green, waist-high railing undamaged.

Mortar shells had exploded in the shrine compound about two hours earlier, killing at least seven people. US Apache helicopters fired at the attackers.

In March 2004 suicide attackers struck worshippers at the Imam Kadhim shrine and a holy site in Karbala, killing at least 181 overall.

The head of the country’s major Sunni clerical group, the Association of Muslim Scholars, told Al-Jazeera television that today’s disaster was “another catastrophe and something else that could be added to the list of ongoing Iraqi tragedies.”

“On this occasion we want to express our condolences to all the Iraqis and the parents of the martyrs, who fell today in Kazimiyah and all over Iraq,” said the cleric, Haith al-Dhari.

Elsewhere, a US soldier was killed yesterday by a roadside bomb in the city of Iskandariyah, about 30 miles south of Baghdad, the military said.

Eyewitnesses said the town of Qaim, about 200 miles north-west of Baghdad, was quiet and virtually deserted today after a day of US airstrikes and heavy fighting between the pro-government Bumahl tribe and the pro-insurgent Karabilah tribe. Iraqi officials said 45 people had died, most in the tribal clashes, during which hundreds of residents fled their homes and took refuge in the surrounding countryside.

The border region is considered a prime infiltration route for smugglers and foreign militants trying to reach central and western Iraq.

This week’s violence came amid new twists about Iraq’s draft constitution.

Yesterday, US ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad raised the possibility of further changes to the draft charter finalised by the dominant Kurdish and Shiite Arab bloc but vehemently opposed by Arab Sunnis who form the core of the armed insurgency.

Sunnis had demanded revisions in the constitution, and Khalilzad’s move indicated the Bush administration has not given up its campaign to obtain some sort of Sunni endorsement for the national charter.

Khalilzad said he believed “a final, final draft has not yet been, or the edits have not been, presented yet” – a strong hint to Shiites and Kurds that Washington wants another bid to accommodate the Sunnis before the October 15 referendum.

Shiite leaders had no comment on the ambassador’s remarks. As constitution wrangling drew to a close last week, Shiite officials complained privately that the Sunnis were stonewalling and that further negotiations were pointless.

Khaled al-Attiyah, a Shiite member of the constitution drafting committee, insisted yesterday that “no changes are allowed” to the draft “except for minor edits for the language.”

This indicated that the Shiites and Kurds would be unlikely to compromise on their core demand for Iraq to be turned into a loose federation. Sunnis fear this would eventually lead to the break-up of the nation which has been ruled as a centralised entity since it was established by British occupiers in the 1920s.

Sunni Arabs form an estimated 20% of the population. They could still scuttle the charter because of a rule that states that if two-thirds of the voters in any three provinces reject the draft, it would be defeated.