IRAQ: Iraq tightens security ahead of Ashura, forbids women from entering major Baghdad shrine

Record ID: 561645

  • Title: IRAQ: Iraq tightens security ahead of Ashura, forbids women from entering major Baghdad shrine
  • Date: 7th January 2009
  • Summary: WOMEN AND CHILDREN
  • Embargoed: 22nd January 2009 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Iraq
  • Country: Iraq
  • Topics: Defence / Military,Religion
  • Reuters ID: LVAYBUVYKKN96XQDCOLKGC1H9TD
  • Story Text: In an unprecedented security move following another deadly suicide bombing, Iraqi security forces prevent women pilgrims from entering a major Baghdad shrine.
    Security was tight on Tuesday (January 6) as thousands of Iraqi Shi'ites flocked to holy sites for a major Shi'ite holiday, just days after a bomber killed at least 35 pilgrims.
    The most important and dramatic of Shi'ite annual rites distinguishing Iraq's majority community from Sunnis, the Ashura holiday has become a major show of strength and a potential flashpoint.
    Once repressed by Saddam Hussein, hundreds of thousands of Shi'ite pilgrims have observed the holiday every year since the dictator's Arab fall.
    But Iraq's Sunni militants have frequently staged attacks.
    During the first post-Saddam Ashura in 2004, coordinated suicide bombings in Baghdad and Kerbala killed more than 160 people, heralding a sectarian bloodshed that would ravage the country in 2006 and 2007.
    Tuesday was the end of a nine-day preparatory period before the anniversary on Wednesday, when Shi'ite mosques ring with the wailing of women and the quiet sobs of men.
    But in an unprecedented security move, authorities forbade women from entering Baghdad's Kadhimiya shrine and surrounding district following a suicide bomb attack on Sunday. The attack, against Shi'ite pilgrims entering a revered shrine in northwestern Baghdad,.killed 38 and wounded 55 people.
    Police said it was hard for the overwhelmingly male police force to search women. Scores were barred at a checkpoint.

    "Why did they issue this order? Why did issue this order? We need to know. Are they going to prevent women from participating in the election?! We need to know about this! Our house is in Kadhimiya and they (security forces) prevent us from going to our house," Umm Khaled, an Iraqi citizen said.
    Another Iraqi citizen offered an alternative solution.

    "Can the minister accept this situation? Such gathering will lead to another blast. We are ready to search women until noon, let them allow us to do so," Umm Mohammed, said.
    Initial reports had said Sunday's bomber was female, although the government later said he was male. Sunni militants have increasingly deployed women and girls as suicide bombers.

    "Baghdad Operation's Command has followed a series of security measures as all kinds of vehicles have been prevented to enter the Kadhimiya area and also we have issued an order allowing men only and Shi'ite pilgrims to enter to the area today and tomorrow. We expect the numbers of visitors to reach to the double from the last year," Brigadier General Qassim Al-Moussawi, a military spokesman, said.
    Violence has fallen sharply across the country since the sectarian violence of 2006 and 2007, but lethal shootings and bomb attacks remain common.
    Police on Tuesday maintained checkpoints throughout the narrow streets and alleys of Kadhimiya, searching pilgrims nearly every 50 metres (yards).
    In Kerbala, the shrine city southwest of Baghdad where Hussein's remains are housed in a golden mosque, the government deployed 20,000 police and soldiers.
    They were forbidden from eating food from unlicensed kiosks along the pilgrimage route, after some members of the security forces were deliberately poisoned in past years.
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