The Battle of Karbala was a battle which was fought during the 1991 uprisings in Iraq which followed the Gulf War. The battle started after demoralized troops throughout Iraq began to rebel against Saddam Hussein. From 5 to 19 March 1991, the city of Karbala became a chaotic battlefield as the result of bitter fighting between the insurgents and the Iraqi Republican Guard. After the failure of the uprising, citizens were killed in large numbers. Parts of the city were nearly leveled.
Prelude
In the years leading up to the Gulf War, the city of Karbala boasted that it had a population of over 150,000 inhabitants. Tourists from Africa all the way to Pakistan flocked to the city in order to go on pilgrimages to the Imam Husayn Shrine. In the months of the Gulf War, the city was carefully spared by the Coalition during its bombing campaign due to the significance of its mosques. The city suffered little damage throughout the war in general.
In the days leading up to the uprising, some believed that agents from Iran moved into the city and hid amongst its population for the future purpose of channeling an Islamic revolution; an unsubstantiated claim which the Ba'athist regime was all too eager to propagate as part of its attempt to discredit the uprising. Finally, on 1 March, the uprising began in the southern city of Basra. With this, the tides of revolt spread throughout Iraq, from the southern marshes to the Kurdish mountains.
Uprising
5 March
Some of the opposition groups had already distributed pamphlets to the local population, feeding anti-Saddam sentiment to the people. It was also reported that a number of these opposition groups consisted of former regular Iraqi Army soldiers who had served in Kuwait during the Persian Gulf War. Earlier that day, soldiers who were returning from the front arrived in Karbala.
The revolt began at 2:30 PM when youths began to ride through the streets with weapons, attacking government buildings and loyalist soldiers. This action encouraged the people to come out of their homes with light arms and knives, known as "white weapons," and join in the attack. Such weapons were supplemented with heavier weapons which were captured from Baath Party forces. The Holy Endowments administration building was the first to be sacked, followed by the sacking of several other buildings. The rebels also stormed the al-Husseini hospital and took over its wards. Many of the holy Shia shrines immediately became the main headquarters of the insurgents, the two main headquarters being the Shrines of Husayn ibn Ali and Al-Abbas ibn Ali.
Some of the local Baathist officials and some of the top security agents, including the chief of police and the deputy governor, were killed in brutal ways because they did not retreat in time. Many of their bodies were left lying in the streets and some of them were burned. On the loudspeakers which were located inside the Shia Shrines, insurgents called for prisoners to be brought to the Shrine of Abbas for execution. By morning, the city was under complete rebel control.
6–11 March
The insurgents hoped that Saddam's regime would not be able to quell the rebellion without air power. But issues had been provoked throughout the city, which was blocked by the coalition forces as a condition of the Gulf War ceasefire. However, U.S. forces did not prevent Saddam's forces from using overwhelming force to suppress the uprising. Karbala was subjected to severe artillery shelling and rebel holdouts were attacked with helicopter gunships, despite the official declaration of Iraqi no-fly zones.
The Iraqi Republican Guards encountered resistance as soon as they entered the city. As a result of the mostly-Sunni Republican Guards' resentment of the Shiites, it was said that the tanks bore placards which read , "No More Shia After Today." The main targets included the main Shia shrines and the al-Husseini hospital. At the hospital, doctors treated the wounded while people continually rushed into it in order to donate blood and medicine, despite the concentrated shelling from the loyalist forces which were located on the outskirts of the city. The rebels put up stiff resistance in defense of the hospital. Once the hospital fell, the army rounded up doctors and nurses and took them away for execution. Patients were thrown out of windows and reports surfaced of bulldozers burying bodies on the grounds of the hospital.