Official: 18m Pilgrims Participate in Arbaeen Ceremony in Iraq.

The number of Arbaeen pilgrims has so far hit 18 million people, an informed official said on Saturday.

He said that five million non-Iraqi pilgrims from other countries participated in the event.

The official added that 1,100 Mawkebs (makeshift tents to provide the pilgrims with emergency services) have been erected in Karbala.

Millions of Muslims in Iraq who rallied from the city of Najaf to the city of Karbala arrived in Karbala city on Saturday to mark the Arbaeen.

Huge numbers of Iranian Muslim pilgrims also walked towards the holy city of Karbala for the annual Arabaeen mourning ceremonies despite attempts to magnify security concerns after the recent unrest in Iraq.

Arbaeen, which is the largest religious gatherings in the world, comes 40 days after Ashura, the martyrdom anniversary of the third Shiite Imam, Imam Hussein (AS).

Each year, millions of Shiites flock to Karbala, where the holy shrine of Imam Hussein (AS) is located, to perform mourning rites. Many of them also visit Imam Ali’s (AS) holy shrine in Najaf.

In the past few years, around 20 million pilgrims from all over the world, including Iran, have taken part in the mourning ceremonies in the Iraqi holy cities marking Arbaeen.

Imam Hussein (PBUH) was martyred in the 680 A.D. battle fought on the plains outside Karbala, a city in modern Iraq that’s home to the Imam’s holy shrine.

In the battle, Imam Hussein (PBUH) was decapitated and his body mutilated by Yazid’s armies. All of Imam Hussein’s male family members, relatives, friends, soldiers who all together formed a 72-member army were beheaded in an unequal war with a 30,000-strong army of the enemy in the desert of Karbala.

The occasion is the source of an enduring moral lesson for the Shiites.

Imam Hussein’s martyrdom – recounted through a rich body of prose, poetry, and song – remains an inspirational example of sacrifice to Shiites, who make up a majority of the Muslim population in Iran, Pakistan, Iraq, and Bahrain.

This year’s Arbaeen ceremonies are held amid the western and Arab media’s negative propaganda and exaggeration of the recent unrests in Iraq to dissuade the pilgrims from traveling to the country but the bordering areas of Iran near Iraq are full of eager pilgrims trying to arrive in Karbala for Arbaeen ceremonies.