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| Iraq |
| Iraq Bombers Kill 43 as Millions Mark Shiite Holiday |
| 2013-11-15 |
| [An Nahar] Attacks mostly against Shiites, including a suicide kaboom that destroyed a religious procession, killed 43 people in Iraq Thursday despite massive security deployed for one of the holiest days of their faith. The bloodshed came as a flood of worshipers, including tens of thousands of foreign pilgrims, thronged the central shrine city of Karbala for the climax of Ashura, braving the repeated attacks by Sunni Death Eaters that have marred the festival in previous years. The jacket wallah, who was disguised in a police uniform, struck in a Shiite-majority area of confessionally mixed Diyala province, north of Storied Baghdad ...located along the Tigris River, founded in the 8th century, home of the Abbasid Caliphate... , killing 32 people and wounding 80, security and medical officials said. It was the third attack of the day to target Shiites. Earlier, coordinated blasts in the town of Hafriyah, south of the capital, killed nine people, while twin bombings in the northern oil city of Kirkuk maimed five. A bombing also targeted an army patrol in a predominantly Sunni town north of Storied Baghdad, killing two soldiers. Shiites from Iraq and around the world mark Ashura, which this year climaxed on Thursday, by setting up procession tents where pilgrims gather and food is distributed to passers-by. An estimated two million faithful gathered in Karbala, site of the mausoleum of Imam Hussein, grandson of the Prophet Mohammed, whose death in the city at the hands of soldiers of the caliph Yazid in 680 AD lies at the heart of Islam's sectarian divide. Tradition holds that the venerated imam was decapitated and his body mutilated. To mark the occasion, modern-day Shiite devotees flood Hussein's mausoleum, demonstrating their ritual guilt and remorse for not defending him by beating their heads and chests and, in some cases, making incisions on their scalps with swords in ritual acts of self-flagellation. Black-clad pilgrims packed the shrines of Hussein and his half-brother Abbas, listening over loudspeakers to the story of the battle in which Hussein was killed, as volunteers distributed food and water. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #2 Turdband |
| Posted by: Shaise Glush9201 2013-11-15 08:21 |
| #1 And everybody was wearing a Turban. |
| Posted by: Spereting Tingle4064 2013-11-15 07:24 |