Karbala festival passes "without any incident"
Karbala festival passes "without any incident"
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Saturday, 09, Sep 2006 10:06
Millions of Shi'ite pilgrims descended upon the holy Iraqi city of Karbala today for the festival of Shaaban.
The religious festival commemorating the birth of ninth century Imam al-Mahdi al-Muntadar passed "without any incident", confirmed Sherwan al-Waili, minister of state for national security.
Between three and four million pilgrims from aross the Arab world made the journey, authorities estimate, with throngs of armed coalition forces lining the major thoroughfares.
Around 7,000 police, 2,000 Iraqi soldiers and 1,800 commandos from the interior ministry manned entrances to the city and patrolled its streets, authorities said.
A vehicles ban that has applied for the past four days has now been lifted.
Meanwhile, Tariq al-Hashimi, the Sunni Arab vice-president, reiterated calls for cooperation from insurgents in the ongoing reconciliation efforts designed to quell secterian violence.
Visiting a predominantly Sunni area of Baghdad he told community leaders: "This is a call for the Iraqi resistance to think ... and sit around the negotiating table before it's too late. Differences will devastate Iraq and this division is not to our benefit."
Recent violence elsewhere in the country, however, has left more than a dozen dead and many more injured.
Yesterday, insurgents fired mortar rounds that killed several Shi-ite pilgrims in a procession on its way to Karbala.
An American military convoy was struck by a car bomb east of Baghdad, wounding three coalition soldiers and killing two civilians.
In an incident in the north of the capital, police shot a suicide bomber in his car, detonating his explosives, which wounded ten civilians and killed an officer. The interior ministry claim that the man was targeting a police station near a mosque.
Bomb attacks in the northern city of Kirkuk killed four people and authorities in Mahmoudiya found the abandoned bodies of six bound people, apparently the victims of a secterian attack.