Relatives of the hundreds who perished in the Baghdad bridge stampede yesterday are scouring hospitals for news of missing relatives, as a wave of burials began today.

Hundreds of funeral tents lined the streets of Shia Muslim neighbourhoods in the capital. In Sadr City, the main Shia district, cries of anguish filled the air, with hundreds of people beating their chests in grief as death reports continued to trickle in.

"I was looking for my son since yesterday among the wounded, but just now I found his body in a morgue ... I never accepted he would die," said Mohammed Jafar.

Some children, orphaned by the tragedy, have yet to be identified. Constant coverage on national television included an appeal for relatives to claim a baby held up to the camera. He was found next to his mother’s body.

Three days of official mourning has begun in a country that, despite being inured to mass killing on its streets, is shocked by the disaster.

At least 965 people were confirmed to have died when thousands of pilgrims taking part in a religious festival rushed for safety on to a bridge across the Tigris, only to die in the river below or be crushed on the roadway.

The final toll, one senior official said, was likely to be more than 1,000, once all the bodies scattered in hospitals, makeshift morgues and family homes across the city were counted.

The stampede occurred shortly after rebel mortarfire targeted the nearby Kadhimiyah mosque, killing seven people and wounding 37, as up to three million Shias converged on Baghdad for an annual religious commemoration.

Although fears of sectarian attacks may have contributed to the fear that drove the pilgrims to their deaths, the shock was felt across the factional divides.

People streamed to help from Aadhamiya, the mainly Sunni Arab district across the river from the Kadhimiya shrine that was the focus of Shia worship yesterday.

But within the ethnically fractured Government, some sought to blame Sunni radicals and the Prime Minister, Ibrahim Jaafari, vowed tough action.

"The coming period will witness a strategic development in confronting terror and terrorists. And we will hit hard those murderers, radical militants and Saddamists," he said in a statement today.

The Interior Minister, Bayan Jabor, and other Shia Muslim officials blamed the Sunnis, but the Defence Minister, Saadoun al-Dulaimi, a Sunni, said it was not related to sectarian tensions.

Most of the dead were women, children and the elderly, who were crushed to death, trampled underfoot or drowned.

It was by far the biggest loss of life in such a crowd since more than 1,400 pilgrims died at Mecca, Saudi Arabia during the haj pilgrimmage in 1990.

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