“We received 17 bodies,” said Dr Ali al-Shammari at Hilla hospital in Babil province, south of Baghdad. Of them, he said 14 were Iranian worshippers, including two women.
Another 53 people were injured, 42 of them pilgrims.
The casualties came from those aboard both buses.
The crash occurred on the main highway connecting Hilla to Najaf, said a police officer from Babil, but no further details were available.
Najaf is home to the shrine of Imam Ali, son-in-law of the Prophet Mohammed and one of Shiite Islam’s most revered figures.
Every day, thousands of pilgrims, many of them from Iran and other countries with large Shiite Muslim populations, visit Najaf and Iraq’s other major Shiite shrines in Samarra, Karbala and Baghdad.
