Iraq's Interior Ministry on Thursday announced that the death toll from Wednesday's Baghdad bridge stampede stood at 953 dead and 815 injured. Some 200 wounded remained in hospital Thursday, officials said. This tragedy was the single biggest loss of life known in Iraq since the March 2003 U.S.-led occupation.
Most of the victims were children and women. Rumors about suicide bombers panicked thousands of Shiite pilgrims during a religious procession. The marchers were commemorating the death in the year 799 of Imam Moussa ibn Jaafar al-Kadhim, one of the 12 principle Shiite saints who is buried in a mosque in the northern Baghdad neighborhood of Kazimiyah.
On Thursday, hundreds of lost sandals littered the two-lane bridge. Thousands of grieving Shiites were searching for their loved ones as mass funerals were held.
Iraqi authorities blamed "terrorists" for the disaster. Iraqi Defense Minister Saadoun al-Dulaimi, a Sunni, said three suicide bombers were stopped Wednesday some distance from the shrine, but "blew themselves up before reaching their destination."
On his part, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, told state-run Iraqiya television that "the government should take measures for an honest investigation to determine how failures doubled the casualties." Iraq's highest ranking Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, also called for an investigation.
In other violence, a U.S. soldier was killed and three were wounded Wednesday when a bomb exploded in the city of Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad, the U.S. military said. The military also said another American soldier was killed Tuesday by a bomb in Iskandariyah, 30 miles south of Baghdad.
