Mass burials for stampede victims

Thousands of mourners poured into the holy city of Najaf yesterday to bury some of the victims of the stampede in Baghdad in the burial ground most sacred to Iraq's Shi'ite Muslims.

The stampede on a bridge over the river Tigris during a religious festival on Wednesday killed around 1,000 people, the greatest loss of Iraqi life in a single incident since the US invasion of 2003.

The government announced a full judicial inquiry.

Hundreds of graves were dug at a cemetery in Najaf, 160 km south of Baghdad. Every few minutes, empty coffins left the cemetery to return with more bodies.

Ali Karim Jabbar was on the bridge with his brothers, Rahim, 30, and Rashed, 25, when the stampede started. Both died and were buried at Najaf.

"Everyone was crossing the bridge; it was suddenly closed and then someone shouted there was a suicide bomber," he told Reuters, weeping. "The crowd in the front tried to go back and the people in the back tried to push them to the front. When this happened there was a stampede, my two brothers disappeared. After it calmed down we found one of them crushed to death and the other in the hospital this morning - dead."

At least 965 people have been confirmed dead after thousands of Shi'ite pilgrims got caught in the crush and died when they jumped into the river below or were suffocated on the roadway.

It was not clear whether the alert about the bomber was by evil design or simple panic.