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  • IRAQ: Pilgrims are fleeing the Iraqi city of Kerbala the day after 52 people died in fierce gunbattles

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IRAQ: Pilgrims are fleeing the Iraqi city of Kerbala the day after 52 people died in fierce gunbattles

Hundreds of thousands of pilgrims were fleeing Iraq's holy city of Kerbala on Wednesday (August 29) after a day of fierce gunbattles near two of Shi'ite Islam's holiest shrines. Fifty-two people were killed during an annual religious rite. Sporadic and occasionally sustained gunfire could still be heard after dawn in the city, coming from the area around the shrines of Imam Hussein and Imam Abbas. Sirens of police cars and ambulances could be heard wailing and police, using loudspeakers, ordered pilgrims out of the ancient centre. Tuesday's battles appeared to pit the country's two largest Shi'ite groups against each other -- followers of cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and his Mehdi Army militia, and the rival Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council (SIIC), whose Badr Organisation controls police forces in much of the Shi'ite south. The two powerful factions have increasingly clashed throughout the Shi'ite south, areas where U.S. forces have little or no presence. The general director of the al-Hussein hospital in Kerbala said it had received 34 bodies and treated 239 wounded. One female pilgrim, visiting a wounded relative in hospital, was shocked at what happened. "We are visitors to the al-Hussein shrine" she said "and they opened fire on us. What did we do? Did we have guns? We are visitors". Police sources say Iraqi police and soldiers have now seized control of the city centre. Hundreds of thousands of pilgrims had gathered to commemorate the 9th century birth of Imam Muhammad al-Mahdi, the last of 12 imams that Shi'ites revere as saints. The pilgrimage, like other annual rites, has become a show of force for a Shi'ite community repressed under former leader Saddam Hussein.

ITN Source | August 29, 2007Watch more videos from ITN Source

Tags:. .battles. .ordered. .each. .appeared. .hundreds











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