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KERBALA - Hundreds of thousands of pilgrims fled Iraq's holy city of Kerbala yesterday after a day of fierce gunbattles near two of Shiite Islam's holiest shrines killed 52 people during an annual religious rite.
Sporadic and occasionally sustained gunfire could still be heard after dawn in the city, coming from the area around the shrines of Imam Hussein and Imam Abbas. Sirens of police cars and ambulances could be heard wailing throughout the city and police loudspeakers ordered pilgrims out of the ancient centre.
Police sources said Iraqi police and soldiers had seized control of the city centre from the shrines' guards.
Fighting, apparently among Shiite factions in the holy city, killed 52 people and wounded 206, a senior security official in Baghdad said.
The general director of the al-Hussein hospital in Kerbala, 110km south of the capital, said it had received 34 bodies and treated 239 wounded.
Hundreds of thousands of pilgrims had gathered to commemorate the 9th century birth of Imam Muhammad al-Mahdi, the last of 12 imams that Shiites revere as saints. The pilgrimage, like other annual rites, had become a show of force for a Shiite community repressed under former leader Saddam Hussein.
The fighting also spread to Baghdad, where police said at least five people were killed in clashes between rival Shiite militia overnight. By morning, some streets were closed in what appeared to be a partial curfew in the capital. Police dragged razor wire barricades across Baghdad's Jumhuriya Bridge, one of the main bridges across the Tigris River.
- Reuters
