At least four people were killed and 18 injured in a fresh outbreak of violence in the holy Iraqi city of Kerbala, where hundreds of thousands of Shi'ite pilgrims gathered on Tuesday for a major ritual, police said. Following the clashes, police ordered a curfew in Karbala and ordered more than one million pilgrims to leave after two days of violence claimed least 10 lives during a Shiite religious festival.
According to Reuters, police said gunmen had clashed with police near the Imam Abbas shrine. The violence follows clashes between police and pilgrims on Monday night in which at least six people were killed. Police said one of those killed in the latest violence was a woman.
The area between the Imam Abbas and Imam Hussein mosques in the center of the city had been cleared of pilgrims.
An Interior Ministry official in Baghdad said six people had been killed and 30 injured in the clashes on Tuesday after police were confronted by a large crowd, some of whom were wielding knives. After first firing warning shots they had opened fire on the crowd.
