Do you think they were so excited about being 'liberated', they got a little carried away?
___________________________________________________________
Two Clerics Hacked to Death in Holy City
NAJAF, Iraq (April 10) - A crowd rushed two Islamic clerics and hacked them to death in this holy city Thursday, witnesses said. An unknown number of people were injured.
''People attacked and killed both of them inside the mosque,'' said Ali Assayid Haider, a mullah who traveled from the southern city of Basra for the meeting.
The accounts could not be independently confirmed.
The killings of Haider al-Kadar and Abdul Majid al-Khoei took place at the shrine of Imam Ali, one of the holiest sites of Shiite Islam, practiced by the majority of Iraqis.
Witnesses told reporters that a meeting was held at 10 a.m. among leading mullahs about how to control the shrine, which has been under the supervision of al-Kadar - widely disliked because of his role as a member of President Saddam Hussein's Ministry of Religion.
In a gesture of reconciliation, al-Kadar was accompanied to the shrine by Abdul Majid al-Khoei, a high-ranking Shiite cleric and son of one of the religion's most prominent ayatollahs.
When the two men appeared at the shrine, members of another faction loyal to a different mullah, Mohammed Braga al-Saddar, verbally assailed al-Kadar.
Apparently feeling threatened, al-Khoei pulled a gun and fired one or two shots. Accounts were conflicting over whether he fired the bullets into the air or in the crowd.
Both men were then rushed by the crowd and hacked to death with swords and knives. An unknown number of people were injured.
''Al Kadar was an animal,'' said Adil Adnan al-Moussawi, 25, who witnessed the confrontation. ''The people were shouting they hate him, he should not be here.''
Al-Khoei is among the prominent returned exiles. He arrived in Najaf on April 3. He heads a London-based philanthropic group, and his father was a revered Shiite cleric who died in 1993.
His father, Ayatollah Abul-Qassim al-Khoei, was the Shiite spiritual leader at the time of the 1991 Shiite uprising against Saddam.
Abdel Majid al-Khoei told The Associated Press recently that he has urged his followers in Shiite cities to stay at home and let U.S. troops do their job. He said Saddam's tactics of urban warfare and the use of paramilitary militias made it highly risky for the population to revolt.
AP-NY-04-10-03 1129EDT
Copyright 2003 The Associated Press. |
