Zabiha News

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“They gathered by the green steel-span bridge, where nearly 1,000 people died three years ago in a stampede set off when rumors spread through a crowd of pilgrims that a suicide bomber was in their midst.

On Tuesday, buoyed by renewed hopes for their country’s future, clerics, politicians and ordinary citizens crossed the Two Imams bridge for the first time since the August 2005 tragedy, restoring the long-severed link between the Sunni Muslim neighborhood of Adhamiya and the Shiite Muslim stronghold of Kadhimiya.

First sealed off in early 2005, the bridge, with blast walls like giant gray tombstones, has served as a symbol of Iraq’s fratricidal religious divisions. The reopening ceremony Tuesday was evidence that the nation’s warfare has abated enough to allow Baghdad to try to work its way back to its pluralistic, multiethnic past.

“There was a saying that if Kadhimiya and Adhamiya united again, then all the Iraqi people will unite also,” said Duraid Nouri Salih, who crossed the bridge Tuesday to visit a friend in Kadhimiya.

After the stampede, Kadhimiya and Adhamiya, with its tomb of the revered Sunni cleric Abu Hanifa, were again closed to each other. During the worst violence, the districts traded mortar fire across the Tigris.

Nonetheless, the hordes flocked to the Two Imams bridge on Tuesday. Sheep were slaughtered in celebration, their blood staining the bridge, and reunited tribal and prayer leaders clasped hands.

Some young men drove in a truck, chanting, “Brothers Sunni and Shiite, we will not sell this country.” Convoys of cars circled the bridge into the night, banging drums. A banner fluttered, with the words “bridge of love.”

Hussein Ali Kadhim, 67, was among those marching to the Shiite neighborhood Tuesday, walking across the bridge two years after he suffered lingering head injuries in a car bombing near Adhamiya’s Abu Hanifa mosque.”