Tens of thousands of Shi’ite pilgrims made their way on foot to a shrine in the north of Baghdad on Thursday, hoping for safety at an annual ritual marred by violence in the past two years.
Pilgrims waved flags and chanted and beat their chests in a traditional Shi’ite gesture of ritual mourning. Others carried the symbolic green coffin of Imam Musa Kadhim, a Shi’ite martyr imprisoned and poisoned in Baghdad 1 200 years ago.
Many had walked for days in intense summer heat to reach the shrine where Kadhim is buried. As they neared it they walked past tents offering juice and dates.
”It is not like last year. This year it is secure,” said Abd Sirhan (37), who had walked for two days in plastic sandals from his home town of Azazir, 80km south of Baghdad.
He said the entire route appeared to be safe, with pilgrims guarded by Iraqi police and army checkpoints tended by well-wishers offering water and food. As he spoke, a truck rumbled past with youths tossing bottles of water and bananas to pilgrims on the street.
Two years ago, nearly 1 000 pilgrims were killed in a stampede on a bridge near the shrine, sparked by rumours of a suicide bomber, the single most deadly incident since the United States-led invasion to topple Saddam Hussein in 2003.
Last year gunmen, some on rooftops, ambushed pilgrims on the way to the shrine, killing 20 and wounding 300.
But this year police said there were no reports of violence by noon when the pilgrimage reached its height at the gold-domed shrine.
Um Khaled, a woman in black Islamic clothes, said she had made the pilgrimage every year and would not let the threat of violence stop her: ”Of course, I am afraid. But God willing I will come home safe.”
To protect pilgrims from attack, authorities in Baghdad ordered a three-day curfew banning all vehicles from Wednesday morning. Shops were shuttered throughout the city and away from the pilgrimage route streets were deserted.
The pilgrimage followed a day of angry funerals in Baghdad’s Shi’ite slum of Sadr City, where the US said it had killed an estimated 30 Shi’ite militants linked to Iran in an air strike on Wednesday. Hospitals put the air strike’s death toll at 13, including at least one woman.
The annual pilgrimage, in honour of one of the 12 imams revered by Shi’ites, has attracted one million people or more in the years since the fall of Sunni Arab ruler Saddam, with many making their way from the far south of the country. — Reuters