Shia Muslims run between the Imam Hussein and Imam Abbas shrines as part of the ritual ceremony of Ashura in Karbala, 80km southwest of Baghdad, during the commemoration of Ashura yesterday.
KARBALA: Attacks mostly against Shias, including the suicide bombing of a religious procession, killed 44 people in Iraq yesterday despite massive security for one of the holiest days of their faith.
The bloodshed came as a flood of worshippers, including tens of thousands of foreign pilgrims, thronged the central shrine city of Karbala for the climax of Ashura.
The suicide bomber, disguised in police uniform, struck in a Shia-majority area of confessionally mixed Diyala province, north of Baghdad, killing 32 people and wounding 80, security and medical officials said.
It was the third attack of the day targeting Shias.
Earlier, coordinated blasts in Hafriyah south of the capital killed nine people, while twin bombings in the northern oil city of Kirkuk wounded five.
Violence near Baghdad and in Diyala’s provincial capital Baquba left three others dead.
Shias from Iraq and around the world mark Ashura, which this year climaxed yesterday, by setting up procession tents where pilgrims gather and food is distributed to passers-by.
An estimated two million faithful gathered in Karbala, site of the mausoleum of Imam Hussein, grandson of the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH), whose death in the city at the hands of soldiers of the caliph Yazid in 680 AD lies at the heart of Islam’s sectarian divide.
Tradition holds that the venerated imam was decapitated and his body mutilated.
Black-clad pilgrims packed the shrines of Hussein and his half-brother Abbas, listening over loudspeakers to the story of the battle in which Hussein was killed, as volunteers distributed food and water.
Saddam Hussein barred the vast majority of Ashura commemorations, and the associated Arbaeen rituals, until his overthrow in the US-led invasion of 2003.
The commemorations, which also included a ritual run to Hussein’s mausoleum and a reenactment of the attack that killed him, wrapped up in the early afternoon.
AFP
