Shiites in Iraq gathered in their thousands to observe an annual ritual of mourning on Wednesday, an event that has become a show of strength for a majority whose public worship was repressed by former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein.
Ashura, the most important day on the Shiite calendar, was largely peaceful, guarded by an unprecedented police and army presence three days after a suicide bomber killed 35 pilgrims outside a Baghdad shrine.
At processions of thousands at Baghdad’s Kadhimiya shrine and at other holy sites in Iraq men sobbed, cut their scalps with daggers and whipped their backs with chains to mourn the death of Imam Hussein, grandson of the Prophet Mohammed.
PHOTO: EPA
A road leading to a golden-domed Mosque at the north Baghdad shrine, scene of the bloody bomb attack on Sunday, was again spattered with blood — but this time it streamed from pilgrims cutting gashes in their heads: a traditional rite of mourning.
Thousands chanted “Haider, Haider” another name for Imam Ali, Imam Hussein’s father, to commemorate the slaying of his son in the 7th century battle of Kerbala.
NO WOMEN
To tighten security, authorities had forbidden women from entering the entire district of Kadhimiya surrounding the Baghdad shrine, because it is hard for male police officers to search them, but on Wednesday the ban was lifted.
A gun attack that wounded four pilgrims in another part of Baghdad late on Tuesday underscored the security challenge.
Ashura is the most important and dramatic annual rite distinguishing Shiite Muslims from Sunnis and it has become a show of strength for Iraq’s long-repressed majority sect.
“In Saddam’s time, we were cut off from our history, our culture. Now that’s changed. Now we can know our heritage,” engineer Jasim Mohammed said.
Sunni militants have frequently attacked pilgrims, beginning with suicide bombings in Baghdad and Kerbala during the first post-Saddam Ashura in 2004 that killed more than 160 people and heralded the sectarian bloodshed that worsened in 2006 and 2007.
But like Baghdad, the southern holy city of Kerbala was calm on Wednesday, thanks partly to some 20,000 security forces manning checkpoints with bomb detectors and banning cars.
Local officials said 2 million pilgrims marched through the city, about 55,000 of them from overseas, mostly Shiite Iran.
They included 2,500 Indians, 2,700 Bahrainis, more than a thousand pilgrims each from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and Malaysia, and 500 American and 750 French Muslims.
“I came with my sons and we were really surprised by how many pilgrims there are,” said Qassim Adouani, 56, who traveled from Bahrain.
“This is a very important ritual I had always hoped I would see once in my life. Thanks to God, now I have,” he said.
Men flailed themselves with chains and adults helped kids, some as young as three, whip their backs with little chains.
Arabs and Turkmen in the volatile northern city of Kirkuk also held a march, watched by Iraqi military helicopters.
MOQTADA AL-SADR
Anti-US cleric Moqtada al-Sadr called on the Iraqi resistance on Wednesday to stage “revenge operations” against US forces to protest Israel’s Gaza offensive.
The statement issued by his office in the Shiite holy city of Najaf came as criticism is mounting over civilian deaths in Gaza.
Al-Sadr also urged that Palestinian flags be raised on mosques, churches and buildings in Iraq in a show of solidarity, and that all countries close Israeli embassies.
The cleric issued a statement last month calling for protests and his followers have complied with rallies against the offensive.
However, the cleric said more steps were needed “due to the continuation of Arab silence and the massacres committed by the Zionist enemy under US and international cover.”
“I call upon the honest Iraqi resistance to carry out revenge operations against the great accomplice of the Zionist enemy,” he said, using rhetoric referring to the US and Israel.
Al-Sadr and his militiamen have been staunch opponents of the US presence in Iraq, with fierce battles in 2004.
He ordered his fighters to stand down in 2007 but said he would retain a smaller fighting force as long as US troops remained in Iraq.
Israel said it launched the air and ground attack to end rocketing by the Islamic militant group Hamas that has traumatized southern Israel.
When Shanghai-based designer Guo Qingshan posted a vacation photo on Valentine’s Day and captioned it “Puppy Mountain,” it became a sensation in China and even created a tourist destination. Guo had gone on a hike while visiting his hometown of Yichang in central China’s Hubei Province late last month. When reviewing the photographs, he saw something he had not noticed before: A mountain shaped like a dog’s head rested on the ground next to the Yangtze River, its snout perched at the water’s edge. “It was so magical and cute. I was so excited and happy when I discovered it,” Guo said.
Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening. It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. State-run Vietnam News
TURNAROUND: The Liberal Party had trailed the Conservatives by a wide margin, but that was before Trump threatened to make Canada the US’ 51st state Canada’s ruling Liberals, who a few weeks ago looked certain to lose an election this year, are mounting a major comeback amid the threat of US tariffs and are tied with their rival Conservatives, according to three new polls. An Ipsos survey released late on Tuesday showed that the left-leaning Liberals have 38 percent public support and the official opposition center-right Conservatives have 36 percent. The Liberals have overturned a 26-point deficit in six weeks, and run advertisements comparing the Conservative leader to Trump. The Conservative strategy had long been to attack unpopular Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, but last month he
Four decades after they were forced apart, US-raised Adamary Garcia and her birth mother on Saturday fell into each other’s arms at the airport in Santiago, Chile. Without speaking, they embraced tearfully: A rare reunification for one the thousands of Chileans taken from their mothers as babies and given up for adoption abroad. “The worst is over,” Edita Bizama, 64, said as she beheld her daughter for the first time since her birth 41 years ago. Garcia had flown to Santiago with four other women born in Chile and adopted in the US. Reports have estimated there were 20,000 such cases from 1950 to
RSS