October 16, 2006	Monday	Ramazan 22, 1427

NAJAF, Oct 15: Hundreds of thousands of pilgrims peacefully thronged the Iraqi shrine city of Najaf on Sunday, while suicide bombers struck elsewhere and rival death squads battled north of Baghdad.

In the northern city of Kirkuk, seven explosions, three set off by suicide bombers, killed 14 people and injured 72 more, many of them students at a training centre for young woman schoolteachers.

Meanwhile, details emerged about an orgy of revenge killings between rival Sunni and Shia groups north of the capital over the weekend that left at least 54 people dead, and perhaps killed as many as 89.

In Baghdad itself, a spate of bombings killed 10 more Iraqis, while more bodies were found in the city’s streets or floating in the Tigris river.

The US military also announced the deaths of three US soldiers in southern Baghdad when a roadside bomb destroyed their vehicle on Saturday, part of a dramatic rise in US military casualties in Iraq this month.

Najaf, so often in the past the target of bomb attacks, bucked the trend with hundreds of thousands – officials thought perhaps a million – pilgrims commemorating the death of Imam Ali in relative safety.

Devotees packed the city under heavy security at the golden-domed shrine to the imam.

Carefully organised city services were ready for the massive influx from across Iraq and neighbouring Iran to funnel them to the shrine.

Pilgrims paid their respects, kissing the doorways and walls of the shrine itself, before making prayers and vows to Imam Ali.

“I am happy and stunned,” said Mohammad Jawad, a 36-year-old journalist from the southern city of Basra. “There were huge numbers of people performing their rituals without incident. I was amazed at the organisation.”

All traffic in the old city was banned, and pilgrims were ferried from outlying checkpoints to the shrine by specially marked cars to reduce the risk of car-bomb attacks.

“The ceremonies went off as planned without any incident on a security and organisational level,” said Najaf deputy governor Abdul Hussein Abtan.

“There were a million pilgrims according to the figures of the transportation people,” he added. “The popular committees did an excellent job of protecting the pilgrims and providing services.”

Iranian pilgrim Gholam Redha, a 50-year-old civil servant who also came to Najaf last year, said the ceremony was much better organised this time.

“Thanks be to God, I performed my rituals and the visit was perfect, unlike last year,” he said. “There (were) no problems this time around.”

There were plenty of problems elsewhere in the country, however. The slaying of 14 Shia on Friday by an Al Qaeda-linked group prompted a reaction from Shiite militias that resulted in at least 40 dead, deputy provincial governor Abdullah Hussein Jabarah told AFP.

Sunni civilians were kidnapped from fruit markets and dragged out of hospital beds before being found shot dead in nearby fields.

Iraqi and US forces have surrounded the area to prevent further killings.

Kirkuk’s police chief major-general Torhan Yussef said 11 people had been killed and 62 wounded in a wave of explosions.

In one of the attacks, a bomber detonated a car laden with explosives in front of a school which trains young women aged between 16 and 20 to become teachers, killing two of the students and wounding 25 more.—AFP