IRAQ: Funeral held in Kerbala for slain Pakistani and Indian pilgrims as violence continues in Baghdad

A mass funeral was held on Sunday (September 3) for fourteen Pakistan and Indian pilgrims who were abducted and killed in Iraq's western desert. The pilgrims, 11 Pakistanis and three Indians, had been travelling to holy Shi'ite sites in Iraq on Thursday (August 31) when they were attacked in Anbar province, the desert heartland of the Sunni insurgency, Iraqi and Indian officials said. An official at the al-Hussein hospital in the Shi'ite holy city of Kerbala, where the bodies were taken on Friday, said the 14 men had their hands bound and had been shot in the head. Some had been tortured and one was partially decapitated. An attack on a revered Shi'ite shrine in February has unleashed bloodletting between majority Shi'ites and minority Sunni Muslims who were politically dominant under Saddam Hussein and now form the backbone of the three-year-old insurgency. In Baghdad, a roadside bomb exploded near Iraqi police checkpoint in eastern Baghdad on Sunday (September 3), seriously wounding two policemen, police said. They said that a police vehicle was wrecked in the attack took place in al-Baladiyat neighbourhood of eastern Baghdad. On Saturday (September 2), gunmen attacked an Iraqi security firm in the western Baghdad Jihad neighbourhood killing two and wounding eight, an Interior Ministry source said.

ITN Source | September 3, 2006

Tags:. .source. .near. .friday. .iraqs. .attacked