40 Iraqi pilgrims killed, scores wounded in Shiite religious pilgrimage

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40 Iraqi pilgrims killed, scores wounded in Shiite religious pilgrimage
By Scott Peterson | Christian Science Monitor
Posted on Wednesday, July 7, 2010

BAGHDAD — Shiite pilgrims streaming for days toward a Baghdad shrine on Wednesday found themselves talking as much about politics - and the failure of Iraq's leaders to yet form a government, four months after a national election - as their devotions.

Columns of hundreds of thousands of devotees defied suffocating heat - and attacks that had left at least 40 dead and scores wounded over two days - in order to mark the 8th-century death of Imam Musa al-Kadhim, the seventh of Shiite Islam's 12 most holy saints - and the one, appropriately, revered for his patience during years in prison.

A suicide bomber struck after dark on Wednesday, killing 28 pilgrims and wounding 63, according to the Iraqi police. Several other blasts killed five pilgrims, adding to at least six marchers who died in attacks on Tuesday.

Sunburned from four days of walking, retiree Mohammad Sawaf Jassim stopped to rest at a roadside tent in downtown Baghdad, before Wednesday's after-dark violence.

A white-robed pilgrim, he had marched 75 miles from the southeast, his faith resonating in his observation that "If we can't use our legs (to walk), we will use our hands, because (the imams) are our support in this life, and the next life."