|
Baghdad bridge stampede kills 965
(AFP)
Updated: 2005-09-01 06:59
BAGHDAD - At least 965 Iraqis were crushed to death or drowned in a stampede
on a Baghdad bridge as vast crowds of Shiite pilgrims were sent into panic by
rumours of suicide bombers in their midst, AFP reported.
 |
| Ambulances remain on standby among the crowd of Iraqi pilgrims near
the Kadhimiya mosque in Baghdad August 31, 2005.
[Reuters] |
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 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 Shiite imam.
"We are expecting more drowned corpses to surface," he said.
Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari speaks
to a man, who was injured during a stampede, at the Al-Kadhimiya hospital
in Baghdad September 1, 2005. Crowds gathered on Thursday for the funerals
of some 1,000 Iraqis killed in a stampede during a religious festival, as
the nation grieved over a tragedy which has overshadowed the daily
bloodshed of war.[Reuters] | 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.
|
 | | | Death toll of Baghdad bridge stampede nears 1,000 | | |  | | | Barretos Rodeo International Festival | | |  | | | Katrina hits US Gulf Coast | | |
|
| |
 |
|
|
|
|
Today's
Top News |
|
|
|
Top World
News |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
