Shiite Festival Precautions Bring Measure of Calm to Baghdad

Protected by snipers on rooftops and edgy police officers searching for concealed weapons and explosives belts, multitudes of chanting Shiite Muslim pilgrims walked the streets of this tense and bitterly divided capital Saturday for a religious festival that was marred by tragedy a year ago.

Most vehicular traffic was banned amid fears of sectarian attacks and mass panic, giving much of the city an abandoned feel on what is normally the first day of the bustling workweek.

But the scene was quite different along the approaches to the northern district of Kadhimiya, site of the Iraqi capital’s major Shiite shrine, as pilgrims commemorated the death more than 1,200 years ago of a revered Shiite figure.

Television images Saturday showed tens of thousands of pilgrims hoisting black-and-green banners and beating their chests in grief for the long-departed imam, Musa al Kadhim, as they proceeded toward the resplendent shrine and its golden domes.

Last year, about 1,000 pilgrims -- many of them women and children -- were reported killed during a stampede that was sparked by rumors of a suicide bomber in the midst of worshipers headed to the shrine. That remains the bloodiest day since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 that toppled Saddam Hussein, a Sunni who favored his minority Muslim sect and repressed the Shiites.

Today, Shiites are engaged in a vicious conflict with Sunni Arabs that has cost thousands of lives and shows no sign of abating. Daily pleas for unity from clerics and politicians have gone unheeded.

Shiite religious gatherings have been recurring targets during the 3-year-old Iraqi insurgency; gunmen and bombers from both sects have hit mosques, preachers and civilians in an ever-escalating chain of atrocities.

U.S. and Iraqi authorities have swarmed Baghdad neighborhoods in recent weeks in a large-scale crackdown meant to contain the bloodshed.

But July was one of the deadliest months since the invasion, with more than 100 people reported killed each day across the country.

In the stampede last year, many of the victims were trapped in the crush on the Aima Bridge and plunged into the muddy Tigris River, where they drowned.

This year, officials closed that bridge and funneled pilgrims to two other bridges. They drastically bolstered patrols and banned most vehicular traffic citywide for the two-day religious feast. Officials set up checkpoints as far as three miles from the shrine and deployed troops among the crowds and in adjacent buildings.

The enhanced security appeared to be effective; no major attacks on Baghdad worshipers were reported Saturday, although authorities said gunmen had killed seven Shiite pilgrims Friday who were walking along a highway in heavily Sunni west Baghdad.

“The people are cooperating very well,” Iraqi army Brig. Gen. Abdaljabbar Hamdani said. “So far, the plan is successful.”

But the widespread violence that has become a hallmark of the conflict in Iraq continued to rage elsewhere.

A dozen people were reported slain in and around Baqubah, a mixed Sunni-Shiite town northeast of the capital that has been a frequent hot spot. A police official said at least two of the dead were university professors, reflecting a trend in which intellectuals are targeted.

Elsewhere, a sniper killed a police officer in the northern city of Mosul, authorities said, and a roadside bomb killed a civilian and wounded five others in the troubled town of Hawija, near the northern oil hub of Kirkuk.

A roadside bomb targeting an Iraqi army convoy in Diwaniya, south of Baghdad, killed two bodyguards of a brigadier general and wounded three others.

The military said a U.S. soldier was killed in Al Anbar province, a Sunni insurgent stronghold.

It brought the military death toll to at least 2,605 since the U.S.-led invasion, according to a count by the Associated Press.

In the U.S.-fortified “Green Zone” in central Baghdad, United Nations personnel and others marked the third anniversary of the truck bombing of U.N. headquarters here that killed 22 people, including Sergio Vieira de Mello, a Brazilian who was the chief U.N. envoy at the time.

The stunning attack “marked the U.N.’s loss of innocence,” U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said in a statement recalling the strike.

“The Baghdad attack dealt a fatal blow to the illusion that wearing a blue helmet, or hoisting a U.N. flag, placed us above the fray,” Annan said.

Times staff writers Saif Rasheed and Suhail Ahmad in Baghdad and special correspondents in Baqubah and Kirkuk contributed to this report.