"If America stays, it will suffer," a crowd of some 3,000 people shouted in front of the hotel housing foreign reporters.

"No to colonialism, no to occupation," they chanted, marching behind black flags.

"No America, no Saddam," a group of 30 men shouted in English. "No to America, no to Saddam, no to tyranny, no to Israel," they continued in Arabic.

US forces are not present inside Karbala, the Shiite holy city 80 kilometres (50 miles) southwest of Baghdad that hosts the shrine of Imam Hussein, grandson of the Prophet Mohammed.

Committees supervised by Shiite religious leaders organised the pilgrimage to commemorate, Tuesday and Wednesday, the 40th day after the decapitation of Hussein in 680 AD by an Omeyyad caliph.

Many slogans also denounced Saddam, toppled after a 24-year rule when US forces entered Baghdad on April 9.

"Saddam, thug, where are you now?," pilgrims chanted. "O (Imam) Hussein, look, Saddam the despicable is gone, his fate is unknown."

Hundreds of thousands have flocked from across Iraq to show their grief at Imam Hussein's golden-domed shrine.

Pilgrims beat their chests and flagellated themselves with chains, some crawling into the shrine on all fours in a sign of humility before Imam Hussein.

They carried pictures of the severed and bleeding head of Imam Hussein and portraits of two Shiite leaders executed under Saddam's rule, Mohammed Baqer Al-Sadr and Mohammed Mohammed Sadeq al-Sadr.

But despite the flashy display of anti-American slogans and anti-US remarks by religious leaders, many others in the crowd were grateful to the United States and Britain for having removed Saddam -- and allowing them for the first time in years to express their devotion to Imam Hussein without the Sunni-dominated regime's watchful eye on them.

"God aside, no one but the Americans could have rid us of the tyrant," said Said Mohammed al-Husseini, a young volunteer helping to organise the pilgrimage.

"If the price to pay is reconstruction contracts, it's fine. But we will not accept that Iraq be used as a base to strike Arabs," he said.

"They (the coalition) threw out Saddam, they don't interfere in our affairs, why should I fight them?" asked Hammad Shammari, a 45-year-old unemployed man from Baghdad, who like tens of thousands of others came here on foot.

Religious leaders said marching on foot to Karbala was forbidden under Saddam and those caught practicing the tradition were sentenced to one year in jail.

Many Shiites used to brave the ban by walking to Karbala through the fields to avoid the roads patrolled by police, they said.

"I say thank you (US President George W.) Bush and thank you (British Prime Minister Tony) Blair," said lawyer Mohsen Abdul-Ali Zubeidi, debating post-Saddam Iraq with sheikhs and journalists in a hotel.

"Whatever the reason, if it wasn't for them, Saddam and his sons would be still around for another 100 years," he added, countering an argument from a sheikh that the coalition stepped in for its own interests, not for Iraq's.

Shiite religious leaders have expressed fear that Washington might turn Iraq into a base to promote its interests and those of Israel, at the expense of Arab and Muslim states such as Syria and Iran.

But representatives of two main Shiite currents in Iraq, led by Sayyed Ali Sistani and Sayyed Muqtada al-Sadr, stressed Monday that the withdrawal of US forces should be secured by peaceful means.

SPACE.WIRE