admin“Why did they kill our children? They have nothing in this life but playing football,” said Umm Ibrahim, which means “mother of Ibrahim”.
Her son was one of 18 people killed in February when a suicide bomber detonated an explosives belt at the football pitch in the Shuala area of Baghdad, followed by a car bomb that exploded nearby. 18 headstones, some of them bearing pictures of the victims and small fluttering Iraqi flags, have been placed as a symbolic memorial at one end of the football pitch, near the spot where the bomber struck.
Abu Amir, a retired army sergeant who lost three of his nephews aged 11, 12 and 15, in the attack, was also visiting the site. “These children are innocent victims; they don’t have any guilt,” he said. With Iraq’s football grounds hit by a series of attacks, there was no longer a place for children to play, lamented Abu Amir.
He called on security forces to “protect the fields from criminal bastards”.
Iraq has been plagued by the worst violence to hit the country since 2008, killing more than 2 900 people so far this year. Football pitches and even cafés broadcasting matches have become a target for attacks by militants, and the violence has taken a toll on the much-loved sport in Iraq.
Fifa, football’s governing body, barred Iraq from hosting international friendlies due to the spike in unrest after having lifted the ban just a few months before. And violence also pushed the manager of Iraq’s top local football side to quit after refusing to travel to Baghdad over fears of attacks.
In Iraq, football is one of the few unifiers among the country’s divided religious and ethnic communities.
Iraq’s national team won the Asian Cup in 2007, providing a unifying source of pride during the height of bloody Sunni-Shi’ite sectarian violence in which tens of thousands of people died. —AFP.
Online Reporter