Several killed in attacks coinciding with festival

Описание: (2 Mar 2004)

1. Wide of mosque with people running around in panic including one man shouting and another waving his fist
2. People running and injured people on street
3. Man with burns walking off
4. People running in street
5. Ambulance arriving on scene
6. Crowd of men shouting
7. Iraqi flag being waved and people shouting
8. Crowds of people in street
9. Tracking shot of blood on street and body covered with sheet with pools of blood
10. People walking past mosque
11. Ambulance speeding on road
12. Various of injured being carried
13. Ambulance on road

STORYLINE:

A series of deadly blasts struck major Shiite Muslim shrines in Karbala and Baghdad on Tuesday as thousands of pilgrims converged for the final day of a major religious festival.

Scores were killed and wounded.

An Associated Press reporter saw 10 bodies that appeared to be dead being loaded onto wooden carts and taken away.

Three explosions rocked the Kazimiya shrine in Baghdad shortly after 1000 local time (0700 GMT).

Police sealed off the area while panicked people fled screaming.

Dozens of armed men in civilian clothes tried to maintain order.

In Karbala, 80 kilometers (50 miles) south of Baghdad, five blasts went off at about the same time near two of the major shrines in Shiite Islam, hurling bodies in all directions and sending crowds of pilgrims fleeing in panic.

Many others were injured. Bodies ripped apart by the force of the blasts lay on the streets.

The Ashoura festival, which marks the 7th century killing of Imam Hussein, is the most important religious period in Shiite Islam and draws hundreds of thousands of pilgrims from Iraq, Iran, Pakistan and other Shiite communities to the Iraqi shrines.

Imam Hussein, a grandson of the prophet Muhammad, is buried in Karbala and the blasts occurred near the golden-domed shrine which contains his tomb.

The Kazimiya shrine in northern Baghdad contains the tombs of two other Shiite saints, Imam Mousa Kazem and his grandson Imam Muhammad al-Jawad.

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