IRAQ:Hundreds of thousands of Shia pilgrims made their way on foot to a shrine in the north of Baghdad yesterday, praying for safety at an annual rite marred by violence in the past two years.
Pilgrims waved flags, chanted and beat their chests in a traditional Shia gesture of ritual mourning. Others carried the symbolic green coffin of Imam Musa Kadhim, a Shia martyr imprisoned and poisoned in Baghdad 1,200 years ago.
Many had walked for days from distant towns in intense summer heat to reach the shrine where Kadhim is buried. Tents along the road offered water, juice, sweets and dates.
"Of course, I am afraid. But God willing, I will come home safe," said Um Khaled, a woman in black traditional robes. "I have made this pilgrimage every year, it will not stop me," she said of the threat of violence.
Abd Sirhan (37) walked for two days in plastic sandals from his hometown of Aziziya, 80km (50 miles) south of Baghdad.
"It is not like last year. This year it is secure," he said, adding that the entire route appeared to be safe, with pilgrims guarded by Iraqi police and army checkpoints, and tended by well-wishers offering water and food.
As he spoke, a truck rumbled past with youths tossing bottles of water and bananas to pilgrims on the street. As of 4pm there had been far fewer reports of violence than a typical Baghdad day.
A roadside bomb in southern Baghdad killed three people. Three soldiers were wounded by gunmen in an attack that police earlier had said hit pilgrims.
Two years ago, almost 1,000 pilgrims were killed in a stampede on a bridge near the shrine sparked by rumours of a suicide bomber, the single most deadly incident since the US-led invasion to topple Saddam Hussein in 2003.
This year, that bridge and another nearby are closed, and a third bridge was destroyed by bombers. The procession passed over bridges in the city's centre considered safer.
Last year gunmen, some on rooftops, ambushed pilgrims on the way to the shrine, killing 20 and wounding 300. To protect pilgrims from attack, authorities in Baghdad ordered a three-day curfew banning all vehicles since Wednesday. Shops were shuttered and streets away from the pilgrimage route were deserted.
"We have learned from the mistakes of the past years," said Iraqi military spokesman for Baghdad Brigadier-General Qassim al-Moussawi, adding that all bridges and roads in the city linking the Tigris river's east and west banks were under guard.
The precise attendance could not be verified, but Moussawi described it as a "million-person gathering".
Some in costumes along the way re-enacted passion plays of the poisoning of Kadhim, who is known to Shias for restraining his anger. At the shrine, huge crowds clambered to enter the sprawling grounds and kiss the imam's tomb.
The pilgrimage followed a day of angry funerals in Baghdad's Shia slum of Sadr City, where the US military said it killed an estimated 30 Shia militants linked to Iran in an air strike on Wednesday. Hospitals put the death toll at 13, including at least one woman.
The annual pilgrimage, in honour of one of the 12 imams revered by Shias, has attracted a million people or more since the fall of Saddam, a Sunni Arab who repressed Shias.
In southern Iraq, two British soldiers were killed by a bomb, raising the toll of British dead to four in 48 hours. The southern area they patrol has become far more deadly for the British over the past four months since London announced it was drawing down its forces, with 34 killed since April.