A thousand pilgrims crushed and drowned in 'bomb' panic

THE death toll in the worst single loss of life since the start of the Iraq war was last night heading towards 1,000 after a crowd of about one million Shiite pilgrims making their way across a bridge in Baghdad panicked at reports of a suicide bomber in their midst and stampeded.

Most of the dead were women and children.

Insurgents had already targeted the pilgrims with mortars earlier in the day, killing at least seven, and there were rumours circulating in the crowd that a number of people had also died after eating poisoned food.

But according to Iraq's interior minister Bayan Jabor, and two leading Shiite officials, the stampede was triggered by a rumour of a suicide bomber in the crowd. Mr Jabor blamed terrorists for starting the rumour.

Hundreds of thousands of Shiites had been marching across the Azamiyah bridge, which links a Sunni and Shiite neighbourhood, heading for the tomb of Imam Mousa al-Kadhim, a 9th century Shiite saint.

As the crowd panicked and began to push and shove to get away, many were trapped against a security checkpoint at the western end. Some fell, only to be trampled under foot, and others plunged off the sides of the bridge into the waters of the Tigris river below. Some reports suggested that the railings at the side of the bridge had given way.

"We were on the bridge. It was so crowded. Thousands of people were surrounding me," said a survivor, Fadhel Ali, 28, barefoot and soaking wet. "We heard that a suicide attacker was among the crowd. Everybody was yelling, so I jumped from the bridge into the river, swam and reached the bank. I saw women, children and old men falling after me into the water."

Abdul-Mutalib Mohammed, the health minister, said that there were "huge crowds on the bridge and the disaster happened when someone shouted that there is a suicide bomber on the bridge".

"This led to a state of panic among the pilgrims and they started to push each other and there were many cases of suffocation," he said.

Police said hundreds of people started running and throwing themselves off the bridge into the river.

"Many elderly died immediately as a result of the stampede but dozens drowned. Many bodies are still in the river and boats are working on picking them up," said one police officer.

About one million pilgrims from Baghdad and outlying provinces were reported to have gathered near the shrine in the capital's Kazimiyah district for the annual commemoration of the saint's death. The shrine is about a mile from the bridge.

As ambulances raced to the scene, hysterical women knelt over corpses, wailing and praying. Thousands of people rushed to both banks of the river to search for survivors, and men jumped in to try to recover bodies. Others carried bodies on stretchers or lined the river banks trying to pluck bodies out of the water.

Piles of discarded shoes were left on the road, left by the pilgrims in their panic to escape the crush.

Shiite processions, which can draw huge crowds, are often targeted by Sunni extremists seeking to trigger sectarian war, so worshippers are on guard for trouble. In March 2004 suicide attackers targeted worshippers at the Imam Kadhim shrine and a holy site in Karbala, killing at least 181 overall.

But Iraq's defence minister denied that the stampede was related to sectarian tensions gripping the country.

"What happened has nothing at all to do with any sectarian tension," said Saadoun Al-Dulaimi. "Only the seven that were killed this morning were killed by terrorists," he said, referring to the mortar attacks.

Those attacks had taken place about two hours earlier, prompting US Apache helicopters to fire back at the attackers.

Mr Jabor said the procession had slowed at security barricades about a quarter of the way across the bridge, which links the Shiite Kazimiyah district with heavily Sunni Azamiyah.

"Pushing started when a rumour was spread by a terrorist who claimed that there was a person with an explosive belt, which caused panic," he said.

"Some fell from the bridge, others fell on the barricades," he added, explaining that many of those who fell on the bridge were trampled to death. The barricades were placed there months ago to keep extremists from both sectarian communities from infiltrating the other's neighbourhood.

In the aftermath, scores of bodies covered with white sheets lay outside one hospital because the mortuary was full.

By early yesterday evening the death toll stood at 841, according to Iraq's health ministry, with another 328 injured. But the fatalities were expected to continue to rise above 1,000. "We expect it to hit 1,000," said Dr Jaseb Latif Ali, a general manager at Iraq's health ministry.

The prime minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, a Shiite, said it was a "great tragedy which will leave a scar on our souls" and declared a three-day mourning period.

Haith al-Dhari, the head of the country's major Sunni clerical group, the Association of Muslim Scholars, said yesterday's stampede was "another catastrophe and something else that could be added to the list of ongoing Iraqi tragedies".

"On this occasion we want to express our condolences to all the Iraqis and the parents of the martyrs, who fell today in Kazimiyah and all over Iraq," he said.

Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, speaking on behalf of the rest of the European Union, blamed terrorists for what he described as "a most shocking and terrible tragedy", the scale of which " defied imagination".