Thanks to Slarti for pointing this out. Once again it's the Shiite festival/blood ritual Ashoura, a festival which IotD has noted twice before. The news images carry these shots each year but is it helpful to note that only a small segment of Shiites go around cutting themselves or their kids? And that the head bleeds profusely in any situation, and not too painfully? And that they hit the wound with their blades to keep it bleeding?
This is the day which was reported this time around to be utterly violent in another way - marked by attacks on the Shiites, thought to be terrorism meant to try to evoke civil war.
With hundreds dead and hundreds more injured, suddenly the blood ritual is not so bad.
I guess.