TEHRAN, Aug 31: Iran on Wednesday led international horror and outrage over the deaths of hundreds of people killed in a stampede as they headed to a Shia shrine in Iraq, blaming “suspicious hands” bent on causing havoc in the country.

Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi, quoted by the student news agency ISNA, expressed his country’s “condolences and sympathy with the Iraqi people and government.”

Asefi added that “suspicious hands are involved in conspiracies to incite violence and bloodshed among the different Iraqi groups and tribes so that they disturb the security and calm of the Iraqi people”.

At least 843 Iraqis either drowned or were crushed to death or suffocated when marchers surged on to a bridge over the Tigris River in panic after reports that a suicide bomber was among them. Another 388 were injured.

Syria, another neighbour of Iraq, expressed its “sorrow and sadness” over the incident that “cost the lives of hundreds of persons among the brotherly Iraqi people,” a foreign ministry spokesman said.

“The Syrian government and people express their sympathy to Iraqis and to the families of the victims, and they wait for the day when security, stability and progress reign in the country,” the unnamed official said, quoted by the state news agency SANA.

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan lamented the stampede and expressed his condolences to families of the victims and to the Iraqi government.

“The Secretary General has learned with great sadness of the human tragedy that took place today in Baghdad,” Annan’s spokeswoman Marie Okabe told a press briefing.

In Washington a state department spokesman said the United States deeply regretted the tragic loss in human lives among the pilgrims.

“Our sincere condolences and thoughts and prayers go out to the many Iraqi families who lost loved ones in this tragedy,” Sean McCormack said.

In London, Britain, which holds the EU presidency, condemned the attack and blamed “terrorism” for inciting the deaths.

“This is a most shocking and terrible tragedy,” said Foreign Secretary Jack Straw.—AFP