Today’s story of a mass stampede, driven by panic, grew more horrific as the announced death tolls grew. First 600. Then 800. Then this.
A thousand pilgrims crushed and drowned in ‘bomb’ panic
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 dead were women and children.
Insurgents had already targeted the pilgrims with mortars earlier in the day, killing at least seven, and there were rumours circulating in the crowd that a number of people had also died after eating poisoned food.
But according to Iraq’s interior minister Bayan Jabor, and two leading Shiite officials, the stampede was triggered by a rumour of a suicide bomber in the crowd. Mr Jabor blamed terrorists for starting the rumour.
Hundreds of thousands of Shiites had been marching across the Azamiyah bridge, which links a Sunni and Shiite neighbourhood, heading for the tomb of Imam Mousa al-Kadhim, a 9th century Shiite saint.
As the crowd panicked and began to push and shove to get away, many were trapped against a security checkpoint at the western end. Some fell, only to be trampled under foot, and others plunged off the sides of the bridge into the waters of the Tigris river below. Some reports suggested that the railings at the side of the bridge had given way.
“We were on the bridge. It was so crowded. Thousands of people were surrounding me,” said a survivor, Fadhel Ali, 28, barefoot and soaking wet. “We heard that a suicide attacker was among the crowd. Everybody was yelling, so I jumped from the bridge into the river, swam and reached the bank. I saw women, children and old men falling after me into the water.”
Abdul-Mutalib Mohammed, the health minister, said that there were “huge crowds on the bridge and the disaster happened when someone shouted that there is a suicide bomber on the bridge”.
“This led to a state of panic among the pilgrims and they started to push each other and there were many cases of suffocation,” he said.
Police said hundreds of people started running and throwing themselves off the bridge into the river.
“Many elderly died immediately as a result of the stampede but dozens drowned. Many bodies are still in the river and boats are working on picking them up,” said one police officer.
However, at least one report raises questions after surveys of the aftermath.
Questions Arising about Alleged Bridge Stampede in Baghdad
Accompanied by both U.S. and Iraqi army officials, VOA arrived at the Kadhimiya bridge about two o’clock Wednesday afternoon, roughly three hours after news agencies and television news stations began reporting that a deadly stampede had occurred at the site.
[…]
The Iraqi army brigadier general in charge of security on the Kadhimiya side, Jaleel Khalaf Shuail, says he did not witness the stampede, but was told how it began. General Shuail says someone apparently screamed that a suicide bomber was among the crowd of people and triggered the panic.
On the bridge itself Wednesday afternoon, there was one striking sight, which did suggest that something catastrophic had occurred earlier. Hundreds of pairs of shoes littered both sides of the two-lane bridge, which some Iraqis said belonged to the more than 900 Shi’ites who allegedly perished in the stampede.
But there was also a strange absence of ambulances, medical personnel and rescue activities on the bridge or in the river. There was no sign of blood anywhere on the bridge and not a drop of blood could be found on a row of knee-high concrete barriers, which many of the victims were said to have been crushed against.
The barriers had been placed there the day before to deter suicide car bombings. Iraqi and U.S. military personnel, stationed at guard towers at a nearby base with a clear view of the bridge, report that they saw nothing out of the ordinary occurring on the bridge all morning.
Footage of the bridge from an American reconnaissance plane also shows no activity consistent with the reports of mass panic and deaths. The only confirmed incident on Wednesday in Kadhimiya was an early morning mortar and rocket attack, targeting the Shi’ite shrine where an estimated one million Shi’ites from around the country had gathered by day’s end.
VOA visited the nearby Kadhimiya Hospital and found eight bodies and 33 civilians being treated for wounds.
While certainly not a refutation of the story of mass death, the scene shortly afterwards does raise some points to ponder.