Iraqi Shiite festival escapes bloodshed
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Hundreds of thousands of Shiite Muslims clambered aboard buses or began trekking homeward on foot Saturday at the end of Ashoura, a 10-day ritual to cleanse the spirit and scourge the body in honor of their founding saint.
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KERBALA, Iraq  - More than a million Shi'ite Muslim pilgrims poured into Iraq's holy city of Kerbala on Wednesday, defying sectarian attacks that have killed about 200 people in two days of bloodshed.
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KERBALA, Iraq  - Iraqi forces imposed tight security on the city of Kerbala as 2.5 million pilgrims marked the climax of a major Shi'ite rite on Saturday, a day after gunmen attacked worshippers and police in other southern cities.
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Shiite pilgrims came under attack again Tuesday, police said, with at least eight killed as they streamed south from Baghdad on foot toward a shrine ahead of a Muslim holiday this weekend.
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One of Iraqâs most sacred Shiite shrines, the Imam al-Askari mosque in Samarra, was attacked and severely damaged again today, just over a year after the previous attack on the site unleashed a tide of national sectarian bloodletting.
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A curfew and weapons ban was in effect and Shiite pilgrims were evacuated from the holy city of Karbala after fighting there killed 26 people and wounded 33 others, the Iraqi Interior Ministry said Tuesday.
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KERBALA, Iraq  - Hundreds of thousands of pilgrims fled Iraq's holy city of Kerbala on Wednesday after a day of fierce gunbattles near two of Shi'ite Islam's holiest shrines killed 52 people during an annual religious rite.
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NAJAF, Iraq  - Supporters of Iraq's top Shi'ite  cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani were fired upon in the  town of Kufa on Thursday and 20 people were killed, a Reuters  photographer said from the scene.
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A suicide car bomber turned a venerable book market into a deadly inferno and gunmen targeted Shiite pilgrims Monday as suspected Sunni insurgents brought major bloodshed back into the lap of their main Shiite rivals. At least 38 people died in the blast and seven pilgrims were killed.
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Clashes in Sadr City, where US forces and militiamen loyal to rebel Shi&#39;ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr have been fighting since April, have killed at least 22 Iraqis.
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Iraq's Shiite prime minister said Friday hard-line Sunni clerics outside Iraq share the blame for this week's bloodshed at a Shiite religious festival in Karbala because they issued religious decrees terming Shiites heretics.
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BAGHDAD -- More than 115 Shi'ite pilgrims were killed in a coordinated series of attacks across Iraq yesterday, a wave of violence on the eve of one of Shi'ite Islam's most sacred holidays that appeared intended to widen Iraq's sectarian divide.
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BAGHDAD, July 17 -- The political bloc of Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr has ended its month-long boycott of the Iraqi parliament, a spokesman for the group said Tuesday, a political advance amid sectarian violence that included the slaying of 29 Shiites overnight by men dressed in military uniforms.
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Violence throughout the country defied increased efforts to stanch the spread of sectarian bloodshed.
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Insurgents with guns and a roadside bomb ambushed Shi'ite Muslim pilgrims heading for a religious festival in southern Baghdad on Wednesday, killing five and wounding 10, a police source said.
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BASRA, Iraq  - Iraqi soldiers and police fought running battles with gunmen from a Shi'ite cult in two southern cities on Friday in which dozens of people were killed and nearly 100 wounded, officials said.
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KERBALA, Iraq  - More than a million Shi'ite Muslim pilgrims poured into Iraq's holy city of Kerbala on Wednesday, defying insurgents who killed around 160 people in two days of attacks blamed by the government on Sunni militants.