Stampede on Iraq bridge kills at least 950 pilgrims

BAGHDAD -- Hundreds of Shi'ite Muslim pilgrims participating in an annual religious commemoration were crushed to death yesterday as they crossed a bridge leading to a holy site in northern Baghdad, in a stampede apparently triggered by fears of an insurgent attack and exacerbated by tight security restrictions.

Today, Iraq's Interior Ministry said the toll stood at 953 dead, most of them women, children, and the elderly. Officials fear the numbers could increase. It was deadliest episode in Iraq since well before the 2003 US-led invasion, and it was more than five times higher than that of the largest insurgent suicide bombing.

At least 800 more Iraqis were injured in the chaos along the four-lane roadway of the quarter-mile concrete-and-steel-girder bridge that spans the Tigris River.

The victims were among the approximately 1 million Shi'ites from Iraq, Iran, and elsewhere who cram into Baghdad's Kadhimiya suburb once a year to commemorate the martyrdom of Imam Kadhim, an eighth-century Shi'ite saint.

''I died over and over again," said Iraqi Army Colonel Hassan Jabouri, who carried away many dead children. ''It's very hard to see a baby die in front of you."

The deaths cast a pall over a nation already on edge following weeks of divisive debate over a new constitution and wearied by months of sectarian violence between Shi'ites and Sunnis. Fears surfaced that Shi'ites might vent their anger over the stampede at Sunnis, even though it appeared to be an accident.

Many of the victims hailed from Sadr City, the vast eastern Baghdad slum where 2 million mostly poor Shi'ite Arabs live. As dusk settled, the streets of Sadr City turned into a vast funeral procession, with weeping men erecting mourning tents and bodies laid out in mosques to be washed in preparation for burial.

One woman arrived at the Saheb Zaman mosque in a taxi, crying and beating her face. She said she had lost her 9-month-old child in the crush and came to search for him among the corpses.

''One family lost four members," said Fatah Sheik, an Iraqi politician from Sadr City who estimated that 600 of the dead came from his neighborhood. ''We found a lady from Sadr City dead with her dead child lying on her chest. An old man took his two grandsons to the [Imam Kadhim] shrine [in Kadhimiya]. They came back in three boxes."

The exact cause of the melee remained unclear. Several mortar rounds had fallen on the crowds earlier in the day, killing at least six and making pilgrims and the many Iraqi soldiers and police officers on the scene skittish. Previous pilgrimages in Baghdad and shrines in Najaf and Karbala have been marred by suicide bombings -- at least 181 people were killed in coordinated blasts at Shi'ite shrines in Karbala and Baghdad in March 2004, the largest such incident previously.

Some witnesses yesterday said pilgrims panicked when they heard a rumor that a suicide bomber was among them. The crowd was boxed between high metal fences along the bridge and unable to move backward or forward because of checkpoints in front and oncoming pilgrims behind.

Others said additional mortar rounds had been fired at the pilgrims, causing the panic.

Some victims, desperate to avoid being trampled, jumped into the river's muddy currents and drowned, witnesses and officials said. Most suffocated or were trampled to death as they tried to cross the bridge or escape the two-hour melee.

Survivors described macabre scenes of chaos. Ali Younis Hossein, a 32-year-old laborer sitting on a mattress in the hallways of Karkh Hospital, described being nearly choked to death by the crowd on the Aima Bridge and pointed to a bite-mark on his ankle from a victim underfoot.

''I had to step on them to get away," he said.

After the chaos subsided, survivors gasped as they walked past mounds of colorful plastic slippers, the type worn by poor Iraqis, that were lying on the bridge along with tangled black women's abayas and purses. Weeping women sorted through the piles, looking for the slippers of loved ones while scavengers searched the heaps for valuables.

Iraqi officials acknowledged that the tragedy was probably compounded by security measures put in place to prevent insurgents from crossing into Kadhimiya during the Shi'ite festivities. Kadhimiya is a mostly Shi'ite neighborhood, while the neighborhood across the river, Adhamiya, is mostly Sunni Arab, the minority sect that once controlled Iraq and has fueled the two-and-a-half-year insurgency against US-led forces and the Iraqi government.

Officials had worried that a recent up-tick in sectarian violence could lead to full-fledged fighting between Sunnis and Shi'ites, who march through the streets of Adhamiya during the Imam Kadhim commemoration. Instead, there were examples of Sunnis helping evacuate injured Shi'ite mourners.

General Rawad Rumediam, a military commander at the bridge, said that 3-foot-high concrete barriers put in place to prevent car bombs from entering probably contributed to the crush. Saddoun Dulaymi, Iraq's defense minister, said the checkpoints at the bridge meant to search pedestrians for explosive devices may have slowed the flow of the crowd across the bridge and contributed to the disaster.

Brigadier General Abdul-Jalil Khalaf, military commander of Kadhimiya, conceded in a television interview that the bridge ''was not suitable for the use of pedestrians."

Survivors, some wandering upon the bridge after the accident, blamed security officials for the deaths. Many criticized the government of Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari.

''We asked the army troops to lift the concrete barriers from the road but they told us that the Americans put them in and they can't move them," said Jasim al-Kinani, among the many volunteers helping with crowd control during the event.

The disaster is among the deadliest in recent Iraqi history. Stampedes in Mecca have also killed hundreds of Muslim pilgrims. In 1990, more than 1,400 were killed during the annual trek.

US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said that Washington was ''prepared to offer whatever assistance we can to help the victims of this terrible tragedy."