(updated 31st August 2005)

Baghdad Stampede Kills Hundreds
Ammar Karim, Agence France Presse

BAGHDAD, 1 September 2005 — At least 843 Iraqis were crushed to death or drowned yesterday in a stampede on a Baghdad bridge as vast crowds of Shiite pilgrims were sent into panic by rumors of suicide bombers in their midst. In Iraq’s deadliest day since the US-led war of March 2003, hundreds of women, children and elderly people were trampled underfoot or jumped to their deaths from the bridge after a deadly mortar strike on a Shiite shrine. Iraq authorities said the tragedy — which risks inflaming sectarian tensions in the country — was a “terrorist” act by toppled dictator Saddam Hussein’s loyalists and Al-Qaeda frontman in Iraq, Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi. A security official said 843 were killed and 388 injured in the crush of pilgrims who converged on the Kadhimiya Mosque in northern Baghdad for a ceremony mourning the death of a Shiite imam.

“We are expecting more drowned corpses to surface,” he said.

Most were trampled to death or fell from Al-Aaimmah Bridge into the Tigris River as panic gripped thousands of pilgrims among the several million attempting to make their way to the mosque.

“The terrorist pointed a finger at another person saying that he was carrying explosives... and that led to the panic,” Interior Minister Bayan Baker Solagh told state-owned Iraqia television.

The stampede occurred after the Kadhimiya Mosque — the burial place of Shiite imam Mussa Kazim who died 12 centuries ago — came under mortar fire, leaving at least seven dead and 37 wounded. The incident could further stoke tensions between the country’s Shiite majority and the ousted Sunni elite which has provided the backbone to the raging insurgency, only days after divisions were revived over the writing of the country’s post-Saddam constitution. A carpet of shoes belonging to the victims littered the bridge where waist-high concrete barriers designed to foil car bombers were stained with the blood of victims who had been crushed against them.

“It was Saddamists and Zarqawists who spread rumors on the bridge and that is why people panicked,” national security adviser Muwaffaq Al-Rubaie told the television.

The injured lined the corridors of Baghdad’s hospitals as they struggled to cope with the enormity of the disaster. “The crowd started to panic and women and children were being trampled underfoot,” said Abdul Walid, 54, lying dazed on a hospital floor. “My son was on my shoulders, I don’t know where he is now — everybody was suffocating to death so I eventually had to jump.” An Al-Qaeda-linked group calling itself the Jaiech Al-Taifa Al-Mansoura (Army of the Victorious Community) claimed it carried out the attack on the mosque to “punish the genocides committed against Sunnis.”

The US military said its helicopters had fired on the rebels who carried out the mortar attack and Iraqi officials said seven of them were killed. Officials said 25 people died of poisoning after eating or drinking products that had been deliberately contaminated. Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari, a member of the majority Shiite community, declared a three-day mourning period and went on television to appeal for national unity.

He described it as a “terrorist attack not separate from terrorist attacks in the past”.

The tragedy provoked an international outcry with messages of sympathy flowing in from the United Nations, the United States, the European Union and the Arab League. Neighboring Shiite Iran offered its condolences but warned that “suspicious hands are involved in conspiracies to incite violence and bloodshed among the different Iraqi groups and tribes.” Iraqi Health Minister Abdul Mutalib Mohammad Ali demanded the resignation of the interior and defense ministers whom he blamed for the tragedy. Shiites, long repressed under Saddam, have been one of the main targets of the Sunni-led insurgency. In March last year more than 170 people were killed in almost simultaneous attacks in Kerbala and Baghdad mosques as faithful Shiites marked a religious festival. Yesterday’s tragedy came amid deep divisions in the country over Iraq’s draft constitution, which is opposed by disgruntled Sunni Arabs who are now seeking alliances to defeat the charter in an Oct. 15 referendum.

“Even if it wasn’t directly caused by Sunni insurgents, the perception will be that it was,” said Joost Hiltermann of the International Crisis Group, an organization working to resolve conflicts.

“In the current environment people will see things in a sectarian light... and it may well lead to further expansion of growing sectarian animosities.” Iraq’s Shiite cleric Ayatollah Ali Sistani called for unity.

“He (Sistani) calls on all Iraqis to have unity and close ranks, to give no chance to those who want to provoke discord,” said Hamid Khaffaf, Sistani’s spokesman in the southern city of Najaf.

US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad hinted that the draft constitution, presented to Parliament on Sunday after weeks of tortuous negotiations that failed to bring the Sunnis on board, was still an incomplete document. The Sunni leaders, who are mobilizing the community to strike alliances across the sectarian divide, said they were opening talks with other ethnic and religious groups including radical Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr’s movement.

648 Dead, 322 Hurt in Iraq Bridge Stampede

Wednesday August 31, 2005 1:46 PM
By QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA Associated Press Writer

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - At least 648 people were killed in a stampede on a bridge Wednesday when panic engulfed a Shiite religious procession amid rumors that a suicide bomber was about to attack, officials said. 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, while others were crushed in the crowd. 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 in Baghdad's heavily Shiite Kazimiyah district because of a mortar attack two hours earlier against the shrine where the marchers were heading. The shrine was about a mile from the bridge. Abdul-Rahman said 648 were killed and 322 injured, with survivors rushed in ambulances and private cars to several hospitals, where officials scrambled to compile accurate casualty figures. 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. Scores of bodies covered with white sheets lay on the sidewalk outside one hospital because the morgue was 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 neighborhood, 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. The shrine is about a mile from the bridge. ``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.

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. 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. U.S. Apache helicopters fired at the attackers. Shiite religious festivals have often been targeted for attack by Sunni extremists seeking to trigger civil war among the rival communities. 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 Wednesday'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 U.S. soldier was killed Tuesday 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 northwest of Baghdad, was quiet and virtually deserted Wednesday after a day of heavy fighting between the pro-government Bumahl tribe and the pro-insurgent Karabilah tribe. Iraqi officials said 45 people had died in the 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. On Tuesday, U.S. ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad raised the possibility of further changes to the draft charter finalized 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 Oct. 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 Tuesday 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 breakup of the nation which has been ruled as a centralized entity since it was established by British occupiers in the 1920s. Sunni Arabs form an estimated 20 percent 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. Even if the Sunnis lose the referendum, a bitter political battle at a time when the Sunni-led insurgency shows no sign of abating could plunge the country into a full-scale sectarian conflict. The Shiite Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq condemned attacks by foreign fighters against ``our beloved people'' and urged the government to ``stop criminals and terrorists from crossing into Iraq.''