Thousands of Shiites march to Baghdad shrine

Thousands of Shiite Muslims marched through the streets of a northern Baghdad neighbourhood today carrying 17 wooden coffins with the bodies of fellow Shiites killed while returning home from a pilgrimage to the holy city of Karbala.

The residents of Kazimiyah pounded on drums, chanted religious slogans and threw perfumed water at the coffins as they made their way to the shrine of the mostly Shiite neighbourhood.

Gunmen in the capital had targeted the pilgrims as they returned from Karbala, where millions gathered this week to commemorate the 40th and final day of symbolic mourning for the Prophet Mohammed’s grandson.

Police reported that at least six Shiite Muslims were killed yesterday and 50 more wounded in attacks on buses and trucks transporting the pilgrims. Officials also discovered the bodies of at least 16 other pilgrims, all dressed in black, on a Baghdad highway.

The 17 victims being honoured were all from the Kazimiyah community.

Police have discovered hundreds of corpses in the past four weeks, victims of religious militants on a rampage of revenge killing since the February 22 bombing of a Shiite shrine in Samarra.

Tight security in the city of Karbala appeared to hold most sectarian violence at bay during the religious event. Insurgents fired a mortar round into a car park near the Karbala shrine on Sunday.

No one was hurt.

The commemoration has been marked by deadly insurgent attacks in the past. In 2004, co-ordinated blasts involving suicide bombers, mortars and planted explosives hit Shiite shrines in Karbala and in Baghdad, killing at least 181 people.