At least 56 people were killed and hundreds injured during a stampede as mourners gathered to bury an Iraqi general blown up in a U.S. drone strike..The tragedy came as the Canadian military announced they would be pulling troops out of Iraq to the relative safety of Kuwait..Chief of the Defence staff Gen. Jonathan Vance said in a tweet some of the 500 Canadian soldiers in Iraq are being temporarily moved due to safety concerns..“Over the coming days, and as a result of Coalition and NATO planning, some of our people will be moved temporarily from Iraq to Kuwait – simply put, we are doing this to ensure their safety and security,” Vance wrote..Canadian troops are in Iraq mainly to train the country’s army on how to fight ISIS..“Naturally, the work we are doing on these missions, and the future of operations in Iraq, remain conditional on maintaining a sufficiently secure and productive operational environment,” Vance said..General Qassem Soleimani was to buried in in hometown of Kerman, in southern Iraq, in a funeral that was delayed for several hours by the crush of hundreds of thousands of mourners..Iran’s news agency ISNA quoted coroner Abbas Amian as saying the stampede killed about 50 people. Officials said the Tuesday crush also injured 213 people..Emergency medical services chief Pirhossein Kolivand told state television: “Today, because of the heavy congestion of the crowd unfortunately a number of our fellow citizens who were mourning were injured and a number were killed.”.Soleimani, in charge of the Revolutionary Guard’s elite Quds Force, responsible for foreign activities, was slain in a U.S. drone strike as he was driven out of a Baghdad airport on Friday..His death has prompted vows of bloody revenge from the people and leaders of Iraq..“We will take revenge, a hard and definitive revenge,” the head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, General Hossein Salami, told mourners at the funeral before the stampede..The Fars news agency said 13 revenge scenarios were being considered by Iran..Ali Shamkhani, secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, told Fars that even the weakest option would prove “a historic nightmare for the Americans.”.U.S. president Donald Trump has vowed to hit back if Iran retaliates, saying he would target 52 sites within the country, including cultural places. That’s the same number of American hostages held by Iranian students in 1980..The U.S. has deployed 6 massive B-52 bombers to standby in the Indian Ocean..In other developments:.• The U.S. warned shipping through the Persain Gulf could be targeted by Iran..• U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told a press conference he was confident the assassination had saved American lives..dnaylor@westernstandardonline.com.Twitter: Nobby7694
