At least 965 Iraqis were crushed to death or drowned in Wednesday’s stampede on a Baghdad bridge as vast crowds of Shi’ite pilgrims were sent into panic by rumours of suicide bombers in their midst.
In Iraq’s deadliest day since the United States-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 Shi’ite 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’s frontman in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
A security official said 965 were killed and 465 injured in the crush of pilgrims who converged on the Kadhimiya mosque in northern Baghdad for a ceremony mourning the death of a revered Shi’ite imam.
”We are expecting more drowned corpses to surface,” he said.
Most were trampled to death or fell from Al-Aaimmah bridge into the River Tigris 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 Shi’ite 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 Shi’ite majority and the ousted Sunni elite that 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 rumours on the bridge and that is why people panicked,” National Security Adviser Muwaffaq al-Rubaie told the television channel.
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 al-Jaafari, a member of the majority Shi’ite 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”.
Iraqi Minister of Health Abdul Mutalib Mohammad Ali demanded the resignation of the interior and defence ministers whom he blamed for the tragedy.
International outcry
The tragedy provoked an international outcry, with messages of sympathy flowing in from the United Nations, the US, the European Union and the Arab League, among others.
South Africa was shocked and saddened by the news, President Thabo Mbeki said in a condolence message.
”South Africa extends its sympathies to the President of the transitional national authority of Iraq, Jalal Talabani,” he said in a statement.
”The thoughts and prayers of the government and people of South Africa reach out to the people of Iraq and, in particular, families of those who lost their loved ones,” he said.
Mbeki wished the wounded ”a speedy recovery”.
He said it is regrettable that so many pilgrims lost their lives during ”the peaceful act of worship”.
Neighbouring Shi’ite 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”.
In London, Britain — which holds the European Union presidency — condemned the attack and blamed terrorism for inciting the deaths.
”This is a most shocking and terrible tragedy, initiated by terrorism, and its scale almost defies imagination,” British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said in a statement.
”This was a despicable assault on innocent civilians attending a religious ceremony at the local mosque. The depravity of the individuals responsible knows no bounds.”
Australia on Thursday blamed a ”climate of fear” created by ”terrorists” in Iraq for a stampede that killed nearly 1 000 Shi’ite pilgrims on a Baghdad bridge.
”This horrific event is clearly linked to terrorists who have for months created a climate of fear in Iraq by deliberately targeting innocent civilians, including by launching mortar attacks shortly before the stampede,” Australian Minister of Foreign Affairs Alexander Downer said.
”This callous attempt to sow divisions will not succeed,” he said in a statement of condolence. — Sapa, AFP