| 843 Dead in Baghdad Stampede |
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THE death toll in the worst single loss of life since the start of the Iraq war was last night heading towards 1,000 after a crowd of about one million Shiite pilgrims making their way across a bridge in Baghdad panicked at reports of a suicide bomber in their midst and stampeded.
Most of the victims were women, children and the elderly, hospital officials said.
It was by far the deadliest incident since the US-led war on Iraq more than two years ago and could further stoke tensions between the country’s Shiite majority and the ousted Sunni elite behind the raging insurgency.
Many of the dead drowned after falling off a bridge into the Tigris river in a surge of panic triggered by rumours that suicide bombers were in the crowd following the attack on the Shiite shrine, officials said.
“The attacks are terrorist... who fired the mortars? Who spread panic among pilgrims on the bridge?” said Health Minister Abdul Mutalib Mohammad Ali.
A security official said the latest toll from the stampede stood at 843 dead and 388 injured, adding that the victims drowned, were suffocated or trampled to death.
Bodies of injured victims lined the corridors of Baghdad’s hospitals as they struggled to cope with the enormity of the disaster.
“Dozens of pilgrims fell in the river Tigris as they panicked following rumours of the presence of two suicide bombers in the crowd, while they were crossing Al-Aaimmah bridge near the mosque,” a security official said.
The incident took place three hours after a mortar attack near the same mosque killed seven people and wounded 36 others, police said.
The U.S. military said helicopter crews saw insurgents "firing rockets and mortars that landed near a mosque," causing "several impacts" on the mosque.
The helicopter crews took aim at the insurgents, and coalition ground units raced to the area and searched for those responsible for the attack.
"At the suspected point of origin, coalition forces discovered evidence of a tube used for launching rockets," the military said, adding that more than a dozen people were detained for questioning.
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.
The prime minister’s office said a committee has been formed to investigate the stampede and mortar attack.
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