Eighth body pulled from Iraq shrine landslide

Rescue workers search through the rubble of a Shiite Muslim shrine in central Iraq, after a landslide killed at least five people including a child.

The body of an eighth pilgrim was pulled from an Iraqi shrine on Monday, two days after its partial collapse in a landslide, with rescuers announcing an end to the search for more victims.

The Iraqi civil defence authorities said that the body of a woman had been pulled from the rubble and debris from the shrine known as Qattarat al-Imam Ali near the Shiite holy city of Karbala, bringing the total number of victims to eight. 

The shrine remains closed to the public, they added. 

Civil defence spokesman Nawas Sabah Shaker had said on Sunday that between six and eight pilgrims had been reported trapped under the debris of the shrine. 

Search and rescue operations have been carried out since the shrine, which sits at the base of high, bare rock walls, became partially buried when earthen embankments collapsed on Saturday due to saturation from humidity, according to the civil defence.

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.

"We want to know what happened, why it happened," said Bassem Khazali, whose nephew was among the victims.

But Iraq's Shiite waqf, which is responsible for administering Shiite properties in the country, said in a statement that it did not manage the shrine nor the land on which it was built.

Rescuers on Sunday drove a bulldozer through the shrine's entrance, which resembles half a dome ornately decorated with blue tiles covered in Arabic script.

The stricken shrine is dedicated to Imam Ali, the son-in-law of the Prophet Mohammed, who according to Shiite tradition stopped there with his army on his way to a battle in AD 657.

Shiites view Hussein, who died in battle in AD 680, as the rightful successor to the Prophet Mohammed, the issue at the heart of a schism with Sunni Islam.

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