Pilgrims flee Iraqi city; clashes kill 52

Kerbala (Iraq), Aug 29: Police ordered hundreds of thousands of pilgrims to leave the Iraqi city of Kerbala today after fierce gunbattles erupted between security forces and gunmen near two of Shi'ite Islam's holiest shrines.

A senior security source in Baghdad said 52 people had been killed and 206 wounded. A source at Kerbala's al-Hussein Hospital said 28 people had been killed and 144 wounded.

Interior Ministry spokesman Brigadier-General Abdul Kareem Khalaf told state television that reinforcements had been rushed to Kerbala from Baghdad and neighbouring provinces.

Late in the evening, the area near the revered Imam Hussein and Imam Abbas shrines came under heavy fire, a senior Shi'ite official in charge of the holy sites said.

Asked if the gunfire was targeting the shrines, the official said: ''Yes.'' He urged the government to take immediate steps to bring the situation under control.

The earlier fighting appeared to be between gunmen loyal to the fiery Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, possibly members of his Mehdi Army militia, and police linked to the rival Shi'ite political movement, the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council (SIIC), and its Badr Organisation.

In a sign that the violence was spreading, police said five people had been killed hours later in fighting between Mehdi Army militia and supporters of the Badr Organisation in Baghdad.

Police said Sadr supporters also set fire to a SIIC office in the capital.

They said a curfew had been imposed and pilgrims ordered to leave Kerbala, 110 km (70 miles) south of Baghdad, bringing to an abrupt halt a major Shi'ite festival that was to have run for two days until Wednesday.

''They came in big buses and now police are forcing them to return on these buses,'' said one local police official.

Many of the pilgrims had also walked from Baghdad and elsewhere to mark the 9th-century birth of Mohammad al-Mahdi, the last of 12 imams Shi'ites revere as saints.

Iraq's security forces had originally feared that Sunni Islamist al Qaeda might try to launch a large-scale attack on the pilgrims to inflame sectarian tensions.

Police said gunmen armed with automatic weapons and pistols had earlier tried to take over the area around the two shrines, the focal point of today's ceremonies.

Struggle For Dominance

Hazem al-Araji, a senior aide to Sadr, told Reuters from Kerbala that the clashes erupted when police objected to pilgrims chanting pro-Sadr slogans and began beating them.

Another Sadr aide said the treatment of the pilgrims had enraged Sadrists and sparked revenge attacks on security forces.

The Sadrists and SIIC, the two biggest Shi'ite blocs in parliament, are locked in a power struggle for control of towns and cities in Iraq's predominantly Shi'ite south. The police in many of these towns are seen as loyal to Badr.

Analysts fear the struggle for dominance will intensify ahead of provincial elections expected to take place next year.

The fighting is likely to be seen as embarrassing for Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, who wants to show that his security forces can take control of security from US-led forces.

One of his two deputies, Barham Salih, warned in an interview with Reuters late on Monday against an early US troop pullout.

''A premature withdrawal of troops from Iraq will be a disaster,'' Salih said.

''It will lead to an all-out civil war, it will lead to a regional war in my opinion because the fate of Iraq is crucial to the regional balance and to regional security.'' US jets were dispatched to fly over Kerbala as a ''show of force'' at the request of Iraqi authorities, but that was the only US participation so far in the operation, said Major Alayne Conway, spokeswoman for US forces south of Baghdad.

Today's violence followed clashes late at night between police and pilgrims in the city in which the local hospital said seven pilgrims were killed and 35 wounded.

Reuters
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