BAGHDAD, Iraq – Wailing over the coffins of loved ones yesterday, 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, American jets launched air strikes for the third time in a week near the Syrian border, destroying a train station the American command said was used by Al Qaeda 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.

Others were laid to rest in Baghdad’s Sadr City, a sprawling Shiite slum of about 2 million inhabitants where American 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,” a Shiite lawmaker allied with radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, Baha al-Aaraji, said.

Relatives of the victims complained of chaotic rescue services and a lack of information from the authorities.

Anger over the tragedy sent hundreds of Shiites marching toward the bridge yesterday, shouting slogans blaming Al Qaeda’s Iraq leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, for the stampede. Increasing tensions occurred as the country was preparing for the October 15 referendum on the new constitution, which Shiite and Kurdish politicians pushed through parliament last weekend over the objections of Sunni Arab negotiators.

Yesterday, a group of Sunni community leaders met in Ramadi and called on Sunnis to vote against the constitution because its provision for federal states would divide the country.

The Sunnis also called for an end to the American military presence, compensation to Iraqis for “what they lost in the occupation,” and the release of all security detainees – the vast majority of them Sunnis – held by American and Iraqi authorities.

In other developments yesterday:

* Three Iraqis were hanged for murder in the first executions in Iraq since Saddam’s ouster.

* Iraq’s nascent air force carried out its first military mission when it flew two battalions of Iraqi troops into a troubled zone in the north of the country, an American military spokesman said.

* Gunmen in Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, killed a policeman and two former officers in Saddam’s army in two separate attacks.