At least 5 dead in Iraq after landslide at Shiite shrine
- On Saturday, a hill collapsed on the Qattarat al-Imam Ali shrine, around 210km south of Baghdad, trapping an unknown number of people
- A civil defence spokesman said rescuers had recovered the bodies of two women, a man and a child, and were working to free the corpse of the fifth victim
Rescuers searched through the rubble of a Shiite Muslim shrine in central Iraq into Sunday night, after a landslide killed at least five people including a child.
After more than 24 hours of digging through collapsed rocks, wood and other debris, “we have found five bodies,” civil defence General Abdelrahman Jawdat told Agence France-Presse.
“That could be the final toll,” he added, while digging continued in case there were other victims.
It is the latest tragedy to befall oil-rich but poverty-stricken Iraq, which is trying to move past decades of war but is hobbled by political paralysis, endemic corruption and other challenges.
Civil defence spokesman Nawas Sabah Shaker said earlier that between six and eight pilgrims had been reported trapped under the debris of the shrine, known as Qattarat al-Imam Ali, near the city of Karbala.
Rescuers drove a bulldozer through the shrine’s entrance, which resembles half a dome ornately decorated with blue tiles covered in Arabic script.
The sacred building, flanked by two minarets, sits at the base of high, bare rock walls. Part of its concrete roof had been torn apart.
Jawdat said rescuers had recovered the bodies of two women, a man and a child, and were working to free the corpse of the fifth victim, another woman whom they had located.