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Panic Turned into Disaster in Iraq: 965 Dead Published: Thursday, September 01, 2005 zaman.com
After being battered by bomb attacks every single day since the 2003 US invasion, Iraq was rocked by the news of a new disaster Wednesday.
A stampede occurred among a crowd of Shiite pilgrims as they were crossing a bridge in Bagdat (Baghdad) sparked by rumors that a suicide bomber was among them. The stampede killed 965 people, mostly women and children.
To reach the wounded took hours as the rescue teams were hindered by the narrow streets. It is feared the number of dead may reach thousands. On Wednesday, the incident took place during the commemoration ceremonies for the Shiite's Seventh Imam Musa Kazim. The crowd was crossing the bridge that linked the Sunnite Azamiye neighborhood to the Shiite Kazýmiye neighborhood. The balustrades broke and many fell into the River Tigris. Many more died when jumping to the river from bridge, either to save themselves or to rescue others. Boats were collecting corpses from the river for hours.
The disaster, the deadliest incident in Iraq since the March 2003 US invasion, is feared to raise the tension between the Shiites and Sunnites, who were already on edge due to differences of opinion over the new constitution. While Shiites accused pro-Saddam Sunnite insurgents, Health Minister Abdulmutalib Mohammed held interior and defense ministers responsible for the disaster. Iraqi Defense Minister Saadoun al-Dulaimi said the stampede was not linked to the sectarian conflict.
The world mourned the catastrophe. Turkish President Ahmet Necdet Sezer, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul expressed deep sorrow to their Iraqi colleagues. Different information on the stampede have been given. Some news agencies reported that while the Shiites were crossing the bridge, blasts were heard which triggered the panic. According to the Iraqi police, however, the cause of the panic was that someone was shouting that there was a suicide bomber on the bridge. Reportedly, most of the dead are women and children; the victims died either by drowning or by being crushed.
Witnesses have told they heard somebody shouting "Suicide bomber!" and a mortar attack two hours before, targeting the Shiite pilgrims, had laid the ground for the panic. The mortar attack targeted thousands walking in the direction of the Kazimiye mosque. The shells killed seven people and wounded 36. A vaguely known organization named Ceys Al-Taife Al-Mansura claimed the attack. A statement posted on an Internet site connected to Al-Qaeda read, "The Warriors attacked the house of renegades in Kazimiyye region with Katyusha missiles."
Fazil Ali, one of the survivors of the stampede, told about the struggle to survive. "We were going to Kazimiyye Mosque thorugh the bridge. It was very crowded; there were thousands of people around me. People started to shout, 'There is a suicide attacker among the crowd!' and the stampede started and I started to be crushed. After that, I jumped from the bridge to the river and swam to the riverbank. After I jumped to the water, I saw many women, children and old people were dropping into the water."
Despite the tragedy, hundreds of thousands of people continued the remembrance ceremonies of the 7th Imam Kazim at Kazimiyye Mosque. Hundreds of thousands of Shiites gathered around the mosque whipped their backs with chains despite the burning sun over them. In 2004,181 people died in a suicide attack also during a religious ceremony in Imam Kazim Tomb in Baghdad .
Mortar attack triggered the events
Iraq Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari announced a three-day-mourning in the country. Iraq Police note that four mortar missiles dropped near Kazimiyye Mosque, where there were hundreds of thousands of people gathered, and the suicide attack rumor started the stampede. The Iraq Heath Minister noted that at least 20 people had also died from drinking a poisonous fruit juice distributed near the Kazimiyye Mosque and warned Shiites. "Don't take any drinks or food from people you do not know."




How horrible. How utterly fucking horrible.

posted by Natticus @ 9:33 AM