Rescuers looking for people who might still be alive after part of a Shia Muslim shrine in Iraq fell down have found three more bodies, bringing the total number of dead to seven.
The General Civil Defence Directorate said that four women and a child were killed when a landslide hit the Qattarat al-Imam Ali on Saturday.
Three more kids have been saved and brought to the hospital. It is thought that high humidity caused an earth mound next to a shrine 28 km (17 miles) west of Karbala to fall down.
“The mountain had been collecting water, but no one had noticed,” said Daifallah Naim, a nurse with Popular Mobilisation, a Shia militia-led paramilitary force.
The landslide hit the roof of the Qattarat al-Imam Ali, which then fell on top of Shia pilgrims who were inside.
“We are still looking for more victims,” a spokesman for civil defence told the AFP news agency on Monday morning.
He also said that witnesses had said the body of another woman was still under the rubble. On Sunday, President Barham Saleh called the people who helped out heroes and told the victims and their families that he was sorry for what happened.
Moqtada al-Sadr, an influential Shia cleric, also sent his condolences, but he also said that there were “suspicions of corruption” around the event.
He asked the government to start a “immediate and serious investigation” to find out the truth and stop corruption from spreading to mosques and other places of worship, as it has to state institutions and ministries, according to the state-run Iraqi News Agency.
Shia Muslims believe that the Prophet Muhammad’s son-in-law and cousin, Imam Ali ibn Abi Talib, and his army stopped to drink from a spring on their way to a battle in 657.