Yahoo News: Hundreds of thousands of Shiite Muslims have observed the holiest mourning rituals of Ashura in the Iraqi shrine city of Karbala under tight security.
With the streets of Karbala in central Iraq teeming with pilgrims, police said the 10,000-strong security force deployed for the Ashura ceremonies was on high alert for possible attacks by insurgents.
Security was tightened further after a raging battle on Sunday between security forces and Shiite militants near another holy city, Najaf, which left at least 200 militiamen dead.
"We have orders to search any pilgrim we feel suspicious about and the police are enforcing the law strictly," said Karbala police spokesman Rahim Mussawi.
The ceremonies marked the climax of the annual 10-day mourning, which commemorates the killing of Imam Hussein in 680 by armies of Yazid in the central city of Karbala of present-day Iraq.
Akil al-Khazali, governor of Karbala, said that "no untoward incident (has been) reported so far."
"Till now nearly 1.5 million pilgrims have visited the shrine of Imam Hussein," Khazali told AFP.
He said that security arrangements to transport visiting pilgrims back to their homes once the ceremony ends had been put in place.
"We have made complete arrangements of buses, ambulances and other essentials for pilgrims who will start heading home from midday," Khazali said.
The ceremony, outlawed under the former regime of executed dictator Saddam Hussein, has become a target in recent years of Sunni extremists.
Ashura, which means the tenth in Arabic, falls on the 10th day of the Muslim month of Muharrem and is the culmination of Shiite mourning for their imam's gruesome death.
A grandson of the Prophet Mohammed, tradition holds that Hussein was decapitated and his body mutilated by Yazid's armies.
Processions of men dressed in white through the streets of Karabal to the mausoleum of Imam Hussein began at dawn Tuesday and continued non-stop through the morning.
To express their guilt and remorse for the fact Hussein was not saved, many of the men flailed themselves with chains or sliced the front of their scalps with swords and knives.
"This is the least we can do for Imam Hussein who sacrificed himself and his family to save the real religion," said a bleeding Ali Mohammed who had cut his head with a sword.
"We do not feel pain. In fact we feel we are one with Imam Hussein."
Ashura was to end after midday prayers Tuesday with pilgrims participating in a final run towards Hussein's mausoleum, a symbolic gesture of Shiites coming to help the imam in his final moments before he was decapitated.
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