KARBALA - Hundreds of thousands of Shiites mourned a revered imam under tight security in the Iraqi shrine city of Karbala on Monday as eight people including pilgrims were killed in Baghdad bus bombings.
Under the gaze of rooftop snipers, crowds of mourners chanting "Ya, Hussein" passed through the mausoleums of Imam Hussein and his half-brother Abbas for the Arbaeen (40 days) ceremony.
They punched the air and their chests with their fists, while others brandished green and black flags.
But in the latest violence to hit Iraq, eight people including four pilgrims returning to Baghdad were killed in two roadside bombings which ripped through minibuses in the capital, medical and police sources said.
And an Iraqi soldier was killed in the northern city of Mosul in an explosion targeting an army patrol.
Karbala officials said millions of Shiites have passed through the city over the past week, many of them having travelled long distances on foot to mark the end of the 40-day mourning period.
But the pilgrimage, which under executed dictator Saddam Hussein's Sunni-led regime was kept low-key, was blighted by a string of deadly bombings although the climax on the final day in Karbala was incident-free.
At least 50 people died in attacks since Wednesday targeting worshippers, including eight pilgrims killed by a bomb near the Imam Hussein shrine itself.
Karbala province's police chief Ali Jassem Mohammed said 30,000 police and soldiers, including undercover agents and snipers, were deployed, with security cameras monitoring key junctions around shrines and along the roads.
About 1,500 policewomen were tasked with searching female pilgrims.
Arbaeen marks 40 days after the Ashura anniversary of the killing of Imam Hussein by caliph Yazid's armies in AD 680, a key event leading to the Sunni-Shiite schism in Islam.
Karbala governor Akeel al-Khazali has estimated that more than 10 million people passed through the city for the solemn ceremony, including 150,000 Shiites from abroad.
It was impossible to confirm the massive turnout figure which would make it nearly five times bigger than the annual pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia.
By the final day, three-quarters of the pilgrims had already made their way home, Khazali said. Many of them slept in tents or even on the roadside, either in the city of 600,000 residents or outside it.
He appealed for motorists to help the returning pilgrims and to descend on the city to drive them home.
On Friday, 35 people, mostly women and children, were killed when a female suicide bomber blew herself up in a rest-stop refreshment tent set up in the town of Iskandiriyah, south of Baghdad on the road to Karbala.
The bomber was dressed in an abaya, the traditional Muslim head-to-toe black garment, allowing her to conceal her explosives.
Interior ministry spokesman Abdul Karim Khalaf said that attack and another that killed eight Shiite worshippers and wounded more than 50 near the shrine on Thursday bore "the imprint of Al-Qaeda."
A blast near the same shrine 11 months ago killed 43 people.
Shiite pilgrims heading to Karbala for Arbaeen have been targeted and killed by Sunni insurgent groups in previous years, adding to sectarian bloodshed that has seen tens of thousands die since the US-led invasion of March 2003.
Under Saddam's rule, crowds of no more than a few thousand would mark Arbaeen in silence in Karbala, under the scrutiny of police commandos, and marches to the city were banned.