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Iraqi leaders urge calm for Shiite ceremonies

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published August 20, 2006

BAGHDAD - Thousands of pilgrims arrived on foot Saturday at a Shiite shrine in Baghdad to start a major religious commemoration as private vehicles were banned from the streets to prevent car bombings. At least 19 people, including a U.S. soldier, were killed in attacks nationwide.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki urged Iraqis to cooperate with security forces during the ceremonies marking the death in 799 of Imam Moussa ibn Jaafar al-Kadhim, one of 12 Shiite saints.

The imam is buried in a golden-domed shrine in north Baghdad's Kazimiyah district.

Tens of thousands more Shiites were expected to visit the shrine today, when the ceremonies peak. Fearing an attack, the government banned all private vehicles on the streets from Friday night until Monday morning. Soldiers, police and Shiite volunteers created a security cordon around the shrine, frisking pilgrims as they arrived.

Mindful of Sunni-Shiite tensions, Maliki, a Shiite, warned against turning the ceremonies into a political demonstration, calling on clerics to urge people to unite and "shun whatever could lead to sectarian fights."

"We warn all those who use podiums (in mosques) to incite sectarian violence that they will be prosecuted as terrorists," he said in a statement.

Shiites from across the country began arriving at the shrine Friday night on foot. Late Friday, gunmen opened fire on a group of pilgrims walking through the mostly Sunni Adil neighborhood in western Baghdad, killing seven of them.

Three mortar rounds landed in Kazimiyah district late Saturday - two in a river and one on a school compound - but caused no casualties.

Last year, the government said about 1,000 people died during the Imam Kadhim commemoration when fears of suicide bombers triggered a stampede on a bridge across the Tigris River. It was the biggest single-day death toll since the invasion in March 2003.

An American soldier was killed in combat Saturday in Anbar province, the stronghold of the Sunni Arab insurgency west of Baghdad, the U.S. military announced.

Nine people were killed Saturday in Baqubah, a major Sunni-Shiite flashpoint, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad. The victims included two professors of the Diyala University who were shot dead while returning home.

Also Saturday, four Iraqi soldiers were killed when the convoy they were traveling in was struck by a roadside bomb in Diwaniyah, 80 miles of Baghdad, police 1st Lt. Raed Jabir said.

Five other people also were killed in scattered violence across the country.

[Last modified August 20, 2006, 01:16:11]