About 2 million pilgrims arrive in Iraq to attend Arbaeen ceremony

Brigadier General Hossein Ashtari said that the number of pilgrims is dynamic so that about 600,000 people have returned to Iran after paying pilgrimage and that arrival of the pilgrims to Iraq will rise up by 300,000 in matters of days.

Arbaeen, an Arabic word meaning the 40th, is a mourning ceremony held 40 days after Imam Hussein (AS), Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him) grandson, and his 72 companions, including 18 of family members and close relatives, were brutally martyred in Karbala on Ashura, the 10th day of the lunar month, by the army of the second Umayyad caliph, Yazid, in AD 680.

The mourning ceremony began and was soon established when Jabir ibn Abdollah Ansari, a close follower of Prophet Mohammad (PBUH), then 77, visited grave of Imam Hussein (AS0 as the Imam’s first pilgrim, 40 days after Ashura.

Brigadier General Ashtari was talking to reporters at the southeastern Sistan-Baluchestan province that shares a long border with Pakistan to meet with the personnel in the border guards.

He said that the Iranian Police are completely ready to give service to the pilgrims, adding that there are some problems in transportation that the Iranian and Iraqi officials are trying to solve.