KARBALA, Iraq: The Shiite pilgrims came here carrying bread and walking sticks and jugs of water. Adel Abdul Mahdi, the Shiite vice president of Iraq, carried three shrapnel wounds from a recent suicide bombing. "I feel dizzy sometimes," he said. But he stepped from his armored sport utility vehicle on the outskirts of this holy city on Friday afternoon and waded into the sea of pilgrims, brazenly defying, like the millions of other Shiites converging here this weekend, the threat of snipers and suicide bombers, gunmen and guerrillas.
Some had walked 10 days from Basra, in the far south; others had taken donkey carts from Najaf, the ayatollahs' power center. Old men and women were pushed along in wheelchairs. Open- back trucks brimming with black-clad Shiites rumbled down the highways, pictures of turbaned clerics on their sides.
Estimates of the number of pilgrims ranged wildly, from three million to seven million, but Iraqi officials said one thing was clear: This was the largest celebration in decades of Arbaeen, the Shiite ritual commemorating the killing of Imam Hussein, the Prophet Muhammad's grandson, in A.D. 680.
Militant Sunni Arabs had tried to turn this year's event into a death march, using bombs and bullets to kill at least 150 pilgrims on the roadways through the week. But it seemed that the more they tried to wipe out the Shiites, the more the Shiites were determined to come.
"You see the people; you see the thousands of people," said Abdul Mahdi, 64, a white skullcap perched on his head and a checkered scarf around his bearish frame as he began an 8-kilometer, or 5-mile, walk toward the golden-domed shrine of Imam Hussein. "They're so peaceful," he said. "It's to show the unity of the people, the tightness of the people, and this is a very strong message."
| More local color in the article. Get the message here: yes, 30 to 50 people were killed by Sunni boom-boyz. Out of 3 to 7 million! This is the largest and clearly most successful Shiite gathering in decades. The IHT reported it, but don't expect it in your local MSM paper. |
|