Horror in Baghdad: Over 900 Killed in Stampede

[trancepriest]

More Than 600 Killed in Stampede Near Baghdad Shrine
By Ellen Knickmeyer,Naseer Nouri and Bassam Sebti
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, August 31, 2005; 7:45 AM

BAGHDAD, Aug. 31 -- Rumors of a suicide bomber in the midst of a crowd of Shiite Muslim pilgrims set off a stampede Wednesday on a Tigris River bridge, killing hundreds as panicked worshipers trampled others or hurled themselves off the bridge, according to witnesses and officials.

Col. Adnan Abdul Rahman, spokesman for the Interior Ministry, said 637 people died and another 183 were injured, though other estimates ranged widely.

The stampede occurred as hundreds of thousands of Shiite pilgrims walked to a Baghdad shrine in an annual religious commemoration that shut down much of Baghdad.

"The people when they were at the bridge, more than one person started yelling, and saying the bridge will fall down, the bridge will explode," said Khalid Fadl, a nearby resident. "So the people started running in panic, pushing each other, trying to run away. Some of the people fell down, and the people stepped on them," Fadl said.

"The others threw themselves off the bridge, into the river."

Crowds tore down metal sidings erected along the sides of the bridge in order to leap into the river, witnesses said. Worshipers pulled countless bodies from the river into late afternoon.

Arabic TV stations showed men laying out the waterlogged bodies in the hallways of the Khadamiya district hospital. horrified crowds watching on the banks dove into the Tigris to pull corpses to shore. Water seeped from the black trousers and shirts and twisted abayas of the lifeless pilgrims.

Two hours earlier, several mortar and rocket rounds hit the area around the shrine, killing seven people and injuring at least 40.

A U.S. military statement said Apache helicopters fired on the attackers after observing the rocket launches.

[trancepriest]

Suicide bombers like crazy in Baghdad and these people (Shiite Clerics) arrange a massive event like this... smart. :

The attack didn't stop pilgrims from continuing their rituals, marked in part by self-flagellation and chest-thumping in their walk to the shrine in the hours before the stampede.

Man this is a hell zone in Baghdad we've created... the hospitals can't even cope with the amount of dead and the death count is rising. We're reconstructing Iraq one body part at a time... into a perect organization of death.

[mursa]

...messed up situation , most def / :-\

[trancepriest]

Death toll now at 841.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/...ain/index.html

[jona7]

damn....

[jbit]

Bush has created what will be another vietnam