HYDERABAD, India: Shia community in Hyderabad is shocked at the killing of three of their fellow community men in Iraq while they were on a pilgrimage to Karbala.

Next to Lucknow, Hyderabad has the second largest Shia community in India. The families of the three men who were shot dead on August 31 reportedly by terrorists, agreed to the burial of the dead in the holy land of Karbala. They were buried on Sunday in the presence of the women relatives accompanying them.

The group had left India on August 23 and entered Iraq after visiting pilgrim centres in Syria and Jordan.

The Hyderabad group comprised 15 members (3 men, 12 women).

Dr Baig of Ghatkesar, Muhammad Ahmed Ali, 42, of Chanchalguda, Hyderabad, who ran a public STD phone booth and Mir Zafar Mashaddi, 62, from Nagaram in East Godavari district were the three killed.

The families of victims are inconsolable. Ahmed Ali had visited the holy places in Iraq 15 times. “We never thought that he wouldn't be coming back,” sobbed his brother-in-law Fateh Ali Afsar.

Mashaddi, a retired manager of Malikipuram Cooperative Bank, was on a pilgrimage along with his wife Masuma Khatoon and mother-in-law Abidunnisa Begum.

Dr Baig was a highly popular doctor in Ghatkesar, about 20 km from here in Nalgonda district as he treated the poor free.