IRAQ: As Pilgrims celebrate the festival of Ashura in Kerbala, gunmen kill four pilgrims and wound six in southern Baghdad.

Some two million Shi'ite mourners crowded the holy Iraqi city of Kerbala as the major Islamic event of Ashura reached a smooth climax on Tuesday (January 30) amid tight security. Pilgrims from across Iraq and the region thronged Kerbala's narrow alleyways to mourn the death of Imam Hussein -- Prophet Mohammad's grandson -- and his followers at the hands of an army loyal to a newly-empowered Caliph in an uneven battle in Kerbala in 680. Large crowds thronged the narrow alleyways of the holy city waving green, red and black flags to symbolise their loyalty and mourning whilst others beat their chests to the sound of drums and religious chants. Residents provided pilgrims with food and drink as they gathered between two of the holiest shrines in Shi'ite Islam, Hussein and his brother Abbas -- also killed in the battle of Ashura. About 11,000 security forces provided six security "rings" to body-search everyone approaching the crowds near the shrines. Some Iraqi television channels broadcast live images of the huge spectacle in Kerbala that should reach its end in the early afternoon. But despite the apparent success in securing Kerbala and Baghdad's Kadhimiya where many others were marking the event, bombs targeted smaller groups of mourners. Gunmen attacked pilgrims in Baghdad's southwestern district of Bayaa on Tuesday (January 30), killing four and wounding six, police said. "A Kia came from Kerbala, then cars parked next to them and (gunmen) opened fire at them. We were the first people who helped them... No one was here to help.... There were dead and wounded people," said Bahaa, an eye witness. The attacks on the final day of the weeklong annual Ashura mourning rite, the highpoint of the Shi'ite religious calendar, came amid heightened tensions between the country's majority Shi'ites and once politically dominant minority Sunnis. Elsewhere in Baghdad, 13 people were killed, including three women and a teenage boy, and 39 wounded when a roadside bomb hit a procession of Shi'ites in the town of Khanaqin northeast of Baghdad, police said. At least eight people died when a procession was bombed in the mixed town of Khanaqin and another three died in an explosion outside a Shi'ite mosque in the town. Ashura has been a favourite target in the past for radical Sunni militants who view the Shi'ite sect -- a majority in Iraq but a minority in the Islamic world -- as heretics.

ITN Source | January 30, 2007

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