At least 4 dead after landslide at Iraqi shrine

Rescuers in Iraq retrieved four dead bodies from rubble of a Shiite Muslim shrine on Sunday, a day after a landslide hit the site, the official Iraqi news agency INA reported, amid fading hopes of rescuing further survivors.

The agency, citing the civil defence service, said a total of four dead people had been recovered from the rubble at the Qattarat al-Imam Ali shrine in the Karbala province.

On Saturday, a hill collapsed on the shrine, around 210 kilometres south of Baghdad, trapping an unknown number of people.

The dead included a woman and a male photographer at the shrine, Iraqi Kurdish news website Rudaw reported, quoting a civil defence spokesman.

The number of those still under the rubble is unknown, the official said.

Earlier Sunday, the chief of Iraq’s civil defence service, Major-General Kadhem Salman, said rescue teams had saved four people and around five others are believed to be under the rubble.

Oxygen supplies have been provided through the holes for those trapped under the rubble, Salman added.

“But I am not optimistic about reaching people alive under the rubble of the shrine,” he said.

“We expect that they have sustained very serious injuries due to the fall of dozens of concrete slabs on them.”

Around 10 people, including children and women were trapped due to the landslide, Rudaw reported, citing eyewitnesses. “Huge rocks fell on the visitors,” one witness, named Sijad Moussa, told Rudaw.

Preliminary investigations showed that the landslide had resulted from saturation of the area and an earthen embankment next to the shrine with humidity, civil defence sources said.

The Qattarat Ali is one of Iraq’s Shiite shrines drawing visitors mainly in the Islamic lunar month of Muharram commemorating the 7th century killing of Hussein, the grandson of  the prophet Mohammed, at the Battle of Karbala