Baghdad, Iraq ? Wailing over the coffins of loved ones Thursday, Shiites buried the nearly 1,000 victims of a stampede on a bridge while politicians and ordinary Iraqis demanded the government explain whether botched security controls may have played a part in the tragedy.

Tension and confusion persisted one day after the biggest loss of life in a single event in Iraq since the 2003 fall of Saddam Hussein. Gunfire erupted at the bridge during a protest march, killing a 12-year-old girl and wounding four other people.

Meanwhile, U.S. jets launched airstrikes for the third time in a week near the Syrian border, destroying a train station the U.S. command said was used by al-Qaida in Iraq to store weapons.

In the Shiite holy city of Najaf, women wept and embraced the simple wooden coffins of the victims of Wednesday’s stampede and pounded their chests in a traditional gesture of mourning. Men carried the coffins, some draped with Iraqi flags, to the Valley of Peace, the world’s most venerated cemetery for Shiite Muslims where many Iraqis prefer to be buried.

A bulldozer pushes away Thursday shoes and sandals lost by the pilgrims on Wednesday, on the bridge in northern Baghdad, Iraq. Thousands of people attended funerals Thursday for some of the Shiite pilgrims killed in a stampede on a Baghdad bridge during a religious procession, as criticism mounted against the Shiite-led government for failing to prevent the tragedy.

Others were laid to rest in Baghdad’s Sadr City, a sprawling Shiite slum of about 2 million inhabitants where U.S. troops fought a radical Shiite militia last year. Many of those who died on the bridge were from Sadr City.

The Health Ministry said the casualty toll from the stampede, which broke out as a result of rumors that a suicide bomber was in the crowd, stood at 965 dead and 439 injured. The Interior Ministry said no final tally was available but that the death toll was between 900 and 1,000.

Politicians and grieving relatives demanded answers from the government about whether poor crowd control and inefficient security services may have contributed to the horrific death toll.

“This is a result of the inadequate performance of the interior and defense ministers, which has caused such a loss of life,” said Baha al-Aaraji, a Shiite lawmaker allied with radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

Al-Aaraji said the ministers should “stand in front of” parliament and if the legislators believe they failed in their responsibility to protect marchers, “they should be dismissed and stand trial.”

The stampede erupted as hordes of Shiite pilgrims, many women and children, were jammed up at a security checkpoint established months ago to restrict movement from a Sunni neighborhood on the eastern side of the river to a Shiite stronghold on the west side.