Its ancient sites may have been damaged and looted, its hotels bombed and its people attacked or forced to flee, but Iraq is still worth a visit, the head of its Tourism Commission says.

|PIC1|Violence in much of the country has frightened off visitors, but tourism chief Mahmoud al-Yakouki said more than 570,000 people visited Shi'ite Muslim shrines in relatively stable southern Iraq last year, a number he hoped would grow.

"Our most important work at the moment is religious tourism, especially to Kerbala and Najaf where the holy shrines are, as these areas are safe," he told Reuters.

"Every day 1,500 pilgrims visit these sites, mostly Iranians but also Muslims from Bahrain and other countries ... We are going to increase this to 2,500 a day, hopefully, after Ramadan. Before the war, Iraq received 8,000 pilgrims a day."

The state body established in 1956 meets the tour groups at the border and takes them to their hotels, offering catered week-long breaks near the holy shrines. Individuals also organise private visits to the shrines.

Shi'ite religious festivals in Iraq have repeatedly come under attack since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. Authorities had to evacuate pilgrims from Kerbala on Tuesday after 52 people were killed in clashes.

The Commission is still hoping to attract investors at an Iraqi business conference in Dubai, to help it build or restore hotels in the southern cities of Najaf and Basra and on the Shatt al-Arab waterway that forms a border with neighbouring Iran, a Shi'ite country and a source of pilgrims.

Yakouki's remit covers largely Sunni Muslim central Iraq, which has been torn apart by violence since the invasion, as well as the largely Shi'ite Muslim south, but not the semi-autonomous Kurdish region in the north.

Run by the Kurdistan Regional Government, the north has largely escaped the violence that has engulfed much of Iraq since the war that overthrew Saddam Hussein.

It has already been encouraging tourists, focusing on Gulf Arabs attracted by mountain retreats that offer a respite from the desert.


WILD REPUTATION

Yakouki's patch is not an easy one to sell.

Kidnappings and beheadings of foreigners working for contractors, media or other organisations have given Baghdad and the surrounding region a reputation as wild and fearsome as that of Beirut during the Lebanese civil war in the 1980s.

Few airlines fly there and Iraqis themselves, let alone foreigners, are often too afraid to go out and have fun.

"We have about 10,000 archaeological sites in Iraq. These were looted and sabotaged after the war and now we are trying to restore them, but this requires a lot of work," Yakouki said.

"The Iraqi national museum has reopened but in terms of visitors, the security situation does not help."

Iraq has never been a popular holiday destination but was home to some ancient civilisations, with the historic sites of Babylon and Sumer. Baghdad has museums, palaces and shrines.

Al fresco fish restaurants once lined the banks of the Tigris River that flows through Baghdad and long-neglected Basra was once known as the Venice of the East.

Last year's attack on a Shi'ite shrine in the ancient city of Samarra, also home to an iconic 9th century spiral minaret, unleashed the worst sectarian bloodshed to date, although much of the damage had already been done.

"Everything has been damaged, in Mosul, Basra, Hilla and Tikrit. We have hotels that belong to the Commission and they are damaged," Yakouki said. "Tikrit and Mosul are hotspots, so cannot begin to restore tourist areas there. We are focusing on the south because it is relatively safe."