Hot on the heels of Dougs update on the tragedy which is taking place while we watch in Louisiana, comes this distressing news from Iraq:
More than 600 Iraqi Shi’ites died in a stampede over a Tigris River bridge in Baghdad on Wednesday, panicked by rumors a suicide bomber was about to blow himself up, an Interior Ministry source told Reuters….
A police source said large crowds had been heading to the Kadhimiya mosque in the old district of north Baghdad for a religious ceremony when someone yelled that there was a suicide bomber among them.
“Hundreds of people started running and some threw themselves off the bridge into the river,” the source said.
“Many elderly died immediately as a result of the stampede but dozens drowned, many bodies are still in the river and boats are working on picking them up.”
Horrible, terrible. I can’t help but think about the recent events in India where criminals of the worst kind deliberately caused panic during very heavy rain by shouting that a tsunami was appoaching.
Actually Frans you raise an important issue. We don’t really know what happened yet, but the possibility exists that the person who caused the panic was a terrorist. If he was, then he didn’t even need to smuggle a bomb in, the fear factor itself was enough.
I was thinking something similar to this after July 21 in London. Those four terrorists didn’t need to come back onto the streets of London and bomb. It was incidental to them whether or not another 50 people died, they caused all the economic damage they were looking for, and got all the media coverage they wanted just by lying in bed.
Worrying thoughts.
Iraqi people do not seem to have any luck. Yes, that what happened is terrible, and then one day later we are remembering Beslan…
Sad…