Shiites march through Baghdad
Throngs of Shiite Muslims marched through Baghdad’s streets today in a prelude to the annual pilgrimage to Shiite holy cities in southern Iraq next week.
The pilgrimage to Karbala and Najaf – one of the biggest events of the Islamic calendar – culminates on Thursday.
Thousands of Shiites are expected to make the journey on foot, a practice that was discouraged under the rule of Saddam Hussein’s mainly Sunni Muslim regime.
Shiites make up 60% of Iraq’s 24 million people.
Meanwhile, US army soldiers – taking over security duties from US Marines in Baghdad – practised crowd-control tactics with hundreds of Iraqis swarming Baghdad’s Palestine Hotel in hopes of obtaining jobs with the transitional government.
Some of the jobseekers trampled over razor wire in an effort to get inside.
The first convoy of food aid reached the city, with fifty trucks of flour and other supplies arriving from Jordan under United Nations supervision.
The supplies will be stored in warehouses until authorities work out distribution.
“It was slow because until now there wasn’t a safe place to put it because of looting of warehouses,” said US Marine Staff Sergeant Jason Selby, who was helping to coordinate activities at the UN compound.
Power remained shut off for most residents in Baghdad, a city of 5 million people.
The lack of basic services such as power, water and police protection has hobbled the city’s economy and fuelled a mixture of rage and resentment against American forces.
Bandits have ransacked libraries, museums, government buildings, hospitals and schools.
With thousands of Shiites from Iraq, Iran and other countries converging on Karbala, site of the 7th-century martyrdom of Al-Hussein, US troops plan to maintain a low profile, hoping that festering internal rifts or anti-American feelings don’t erupt among the surging masses.
“We don’t want to interfere with the pilgrimage. We want it to proceed as normally as possible. But we are prepared for the worst,” said Major James M. Bozeman, a civil affairs officer with the 82nd Airborne Division.
US Central Command in Qatar said today that Iraqi police arrested Saddam’s former finance minister, Hikmat Mizban Ibrahim al-Azzawi, and turned him over to US Marines.
Al-Azzawi, 70, who also served as a deputy prime minister, was apprehended yesterday in Baghdad, the command said in a statement.
Yesterday, thousands of people marched through Baghdad’s al-Azameyah neighbourhood after prayers, chanting both anti-American and anti-Saddam slogans and calling for national unity among the country’s Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds.
