|
Tens of Millions of Shiite Muslim men and women, some beating their chests, marched through the streets of the Middle East on Tuesday to mark Ashoura. In Iraq, attacks in three towns killed at least 36 people taking part in the ceremony, which commemorates the 7th century death of the grandson of Islam's Prophet Muhammad.
In Pakistan, an explosion next to a pre-dawn Ashoura procession provoked an outburst of shooting that left two Sunni Muslims dead in the western town of Hangu, police said. Nine police officers and four civilians were wounded in the attack.
The marches in Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Iran took place in an atmosphere of tension between Shiites and Sunni Muslims that has risen during the past year as the power struggles in Beirut and Baghdad took sectarian lines. A bomb left in a garbage can exploded as Shiites were marking Ashoura in the eastern Iraqi city of Khanaqin, killing at least 13 people and wounding 39, police said. About an hour later, a suicide bomber blew himself up among about 150 Shiites entering a mosque in the eastern Iraqi city of Mandali. Police said at least 16 people were killed and about 60 wounded. In Beirut, the leader of the main Shiite party Hezbollah, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, used the occasion to rebuke U.S. President George W. Bush. "The ones who fomented chaos in Lebanon, who destroyed Lebanon, who killed women and children, old and young, in Lebanon, are George Bush and (Secretary of State) Condoleezza Rice, who ordered the Zionists to launch the war on Lebanon," Nasrallah said, referring to the conflict in July and August that began after Hezbollah kidnapped two Israeli soldiers on the border. Nasrallah was responding to a statement from Bush on Monday when he deplored last week's riots in Lebanon and said those "responsible for creating chaos must be called to account." Using the Iranian term for the United States, Nasrallah said: "When the Great Satan declares his enmity and war against us, this is a great honor and we are proud." One of the holiest days of the Shiite year, Ashoura marks the killing of Imam Hussein, the grandson of Prophet Muhammad, in a 680 A.D. battle at Karbala in Iraq. As the victors went on to become the Sunni branch of Islam, Hussein's death is regarded as the start of the schism between Sunnis and Shiites. The story of Hussein's final hours was recounted in a huge hall in south Beirut by a cleric who broke down and wept. Several thousand men and women listened in segregated seating, many weeping or slapping their heads in mourning. Later, columns of black-clad Hezbollah men beat their chests in rhythm as they walked in cold rainy weather through the southern suburbs, passing buildings damaged by Israeli airstrikes during last year's war against their guerrilla movement. Women raised their fists and joined spectators in cries of "At your service, O, Hussein!", "Death to Israel!" and "Death to America!"
Comments posted are the sole opinion of the author and may not necessarily reflect the opinions of AIM. |
