BAGHDAD, Aug 31: Iraq’s majority Shias have surged to the zenith of political power following the fall of military dictator Saddam Hussein’s Sunni dominated regime but their newly-found ascendancy has been scarred by bloodshed.

The deaths of more than 800 people in a stampede on a bridge packed with Shia pilgrims after a deadly mortar attack is the latest and deadliest in a line of tragedies to befall the sect since the toppling of Saddam in April 2003.

Their success in winning elections and taking government has earned them the enmity of Al-Qaeda’s ringleader in Iraq — the Jordanian-born Sunni Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who makes no secret of his hatred for the newly-empowered Shias.

Zarqawi has described the Shias in voice messages attributed to him “worse than our crusader enemies” and vowed “to remove the symbols and the members of the brigades of treason”.

The deadliest attacks in postwar Iraq have been against Shia targets.

More than 170 people were killed and around 550 wounded in almost simultaneous attacks in Karbala and against a Baghdad mosque in March 2004. In February this year a suicide bomber killed 118 people in the largely Shia city of Hilla.

In August 2003 at least 83 people were killed, including Mohammed Baqr Hakim, head of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), in a car bomb attack on Imam Ali mosque in Najaf.

Even more Shias have been killed, sometimes in their dozens, in the daily litany of attacks against their community which are frequently claimed by Zarqawi’s group.

Iraq is the crucible of Shia Islam, with six of the 12 imams of the faith buried in the country.

The hundreds killed in Wednesday’s stampede were on their way to mark the anniversary of the death of Imam Mussa Kazim, the seventh of the 12 Shia Imams, at his mausoleum in the north of the capital.

While the Shias make up around 60 per cent of the population, they faced decades of repression dating back to the Ottoman period and their victory in January’s elections marked the first time they have won power in Iraq’s history.

Along with their Kurdish allies, the Shias have a majority in Iraq’s parliament and hold the powerful post of prime minister, giving them the crucial say over the country’s future.

During the 1950s the Shias made up the rank-and-file of the Baath and communist parties, before being sidelined after the rise to power of Saddam’s Sunni clan from Tikrit in the 1970s.

Under Saddam, some Shia religious events such as the public display of grief for the Ashura commemoration were banned and repression targeted Shia leaders, including Ayatollah Mohammed Baqer Sadr, who was executed in 1980.

Brutal force was used to put down a Shia uprising in the aftermath of Iraq’s ouster from Kuwait in the 1991 Gulf War.

Since the US-led invasion, their religious leaders, especially spiritual chief Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, have encouraged Shias to take part in the political process.

Imam Kazim was imprisoned by Caliph Harun al-Rashid for 14 years, and then poisoned, his body hung from a bridge and humiliated. Ever since his resting place has been an object of veneration for the Shias.

—AFP