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| Iraq |
| Fourteen S.Asian pilgrims killed in Iraq |
| 2006-09-02 |
| Fourteen South Asian pilgrims were ambushed and killed on their way to Shi'ite Muslim sites in Iraq, hospital, police and army sources said on Saturday. An official at the al-Hussein hospital in the Shi'ite holy city of Kerbala, where the bodies were taken on Friday, said the five women and nine men were all Pakistanis and had their hands bound and had been shot in the head. "They were killed three days ago. Some were tortured. One body had been beheaded," the official said, citing a report from the hospital's mortuary. An Interior Ministry source in Baghdad said three of the 14 were Indian citizens. A Foreign Ministry spokeswoman in Islamabad said Pakistan's missions in Jordan and Kuwait were trying to confirm the report. Pakistan withdrew its diplomats from Baghdad after its envoy survived an attack on his convoy in 2005. Police and the hospital source in Kerbala said the group was ambushed in a minibus heading through western Iraq from Syria, close to a well-known rest-stop on the largely empty main highway across the desert, west of the city of Ramadi. The area, Anbar province, is the heartland of Sunni Muslim minority revolt. Shi'ite pilgrims have been frequent targets for attack. Just last week, a statement purportedly from al Qaeda's Iraqi umbrella group urged Sunnis, who form the majority among the world's Muslims but a minority in Iraq, to launch a holy war against Shi'ites. "This is something that has been happening for centuries. They (pilgrims) go regularly. We have been cautioning people but we do not stop them," Pakistan Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Tasnim Aslam said. |
| Posted by:ryuge |
| #2 Welcome to Iraq, the place to get a-head. |
| Posted by: Zenster 2006-09-02 19:08 |
| #1 "...five women and nine men were all Pakistanis and had their hands bound and had been shot in the head. 'They were killed three days ago. Some were tortured. One body had been beheaded,'... ." Another glorious accomplishment by the Lions of Islam. Allan Akbar! |
| Posted by: Lancasters Over Dresden 2006-09-02 18:09 |