Pilgrims arrive for Iraqi Shiite festival
BAGHDAD, Iraq – Thousands of pilgrims arrived on foot Saturday at a Shiite shrine in Baghdad to start a major religious commemoration as private vehicles were banned from the streets to prevent car bombings. At least 19 people, including a U.S. soldier, were killed in attacks nationwide.
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki urged Iraqis to cooperate with security forces during the ceremonies marking the death in 799 of Imam Moussa ibn Jaafar al-Kadhim, one of 12 Shiite saints.
The imam is buried in a golden-domed shrine in north Baghdad’s Kazimiyah district.
Tens of thousands more Shiites were expected to visit the shrine today, when the ceremonies peak. Fearing an attack among the pilgrims, the government banned all private vehicles on the streets from Friday night until Monday morning. Soldiers, police and Shiite volunteers threw a security cordon around the shrine, frisking pilgrims as they arrived.
Mindful of Sunni-Shiite tensions, al-Maliki, a Shiite, warned against turning the ceremonies into a political demonstration, calling on clerics to urge people to unite and “shun whatever could lead to sectarian fights.”
Shiites from across the country began arriving at the shrine on Friday night on foot. Late Friday, gunmen opened fire on a group of pilgrims walking through the mostly Sunni Adil neighborhood in western Baghdad, killing seven of them.
Three mortars landed in Kazimiyah district late Saturday – two in a river and one on a school compound – but caused no casualties.
Last year, the government said about 1,000 people died during the Imam Kadhim commemoration when rumors of suicide bombers triggered a mass stampede on a bridge across the Tigris River. It was the biggest single-day death toll since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003.
Shiites were prevented from mustering huge crowds at religious ceremonies during Saddam Hussein’s Sunni-dominated regime. But since Saddam’s ouster in 2003, Shiite politicians and religious leaders have encouraged huge turnouts as a demonstration of the majority sect’s power.
As the pilgrims arrived under the blistering summer heat, volunteers handed out orange drinks and free food. Many of the pilgrims waved the green flag of Islam or flags of their tribes, and some were cloaked in white robes, a symbol of their willingness to die.
Because of the vehicle ban, no cars and very few people were seen on the streets except police and army vehicle patrols. But the area around the shrine in Kazimiyah bustled with activity.
The ceremonies are taking place during a major U.S.-Iraqi security operation aimed at curbing Sunni-Shiite violence, which threatens the stability of the new government of national unity. Nearly 12,000 U.S. and Iraqi troop reinforcements are coming in to take control of this city of 6 million people neighborhood by neighborhood.
An American soldier was killed in combat Saturday in Anbar province, the stronghold of the Sunni Arab insurgency west of Baghdad, the U.S. military announced. At least 2,605 members of the U.S. military have died since the Iraq war started in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.