<font color=blue> Remind again why we're in Iraq? Oh wait........Bush wants to make Iraq safe for democracy. Yeah, right!
I wonder if Mr. Bush would be interested in a couple of bridges I have for sale! I bet he would!<font color=black>
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75 Killed in Iraqi Mosque Blast
NAJAF, Iraq (Aug. 29) - A car bomb attack killed a top Shi'ite Muslim leader and up to a score of other people on Friday in an apparent assassination that dealt a further blow to the increasingly embattled U.S. occupation of Iraq.
Supporters of the slain Ayatollah Mohammed Baqer al-Hakim, leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), blamed loyalists of Saddam Hussein for the carnage outside the main mosque in the holy city of Najaf.
SCIRI has been criticized by some Iraqi groups for cooperating with the U.S. military occupation and Hakim had been viewed by Washington as a stabilizing influence in postwar Iraq.
Thousands of people in Najaf thronged the streets outside the Imam Ali mosque, searching through rubble for victims. Three gutted and destroyed cars, two of them flipped over by the force of the blast, were strewn across the street beside the mosque.
"It happened shortly after prayers. It was a car bomb and up to 20 people were killed," Adel Abdul Mahdi, a SCIRI official, told Reuters in Baghdad after receiving reports from Najaf.
He said the bomb exploded as worshippers streamed out of the mosque after Friday prayers. A U.S. military spokesman confirmed there had been a bomb. "No coalition forces were in the area or on the ground because it is considered to be sacred ground," he said.
"Ayatollah Mohammed Baqer al-Hakim became a martyr," said his nephew Mohsen al-Hakim, who is also a top official of SCIRI, in Tehran. "Two cars exploded and caused his martyrdom."
POWER STRUGGLE
The attack is the latest in a series of bloody incidents in Najaf, several of them aimed at religious leaders of the Shi'ite branch of Islam followed by a majority of Iraqis.
On Sunday three men were killed in a bombing that injured Hakim's uncle, also a cleric associated with SCIRI. Some SCIRI supporters blamed that bomb on a rival Shi'ite leader opposed to the presence of foreign troops.
The Shi'ite power struggle in Najaf is seen as one of the keys to the political future of Iraq, a majority of whose people are Shi'ites.
SCIRI officials said however they suspected remnants of Saddam's regime of Friday's bombing.
"In the first place we hold former Baathists and those related to them responsible and we call on those responsible for security in Iraq particularly in Najaf to carry out an immediate investigation in the case," said Hakim.
Hamid al-Bayati, SCIRI's London representative, said: "It could be either Saddam loyalists using new techniques such as remote control or even suicide bombs, or it could be another extreme group.
"We proposed to the allies a long time ago...to have a special security organization to protect the holy places and the religious scholars," he said. "The allies did not respond to this proposal."
Mohammed Baqer al-Hakim was tortured under Saddam's rule and spent more than 20 years in exile in Iran before returning to Iraq earlier this year after the U.S.-led victory over Saddam.
U.S. TROOPS AMBUSHED
Further north, guerrillas ambushed a U.S. military convoy with rocket-propelled grenades on Friday, killing a soldier and wounding three others amid growing calls for a United Nations force to pacify the country.
A U.S. Army spokesman said the six-vehicle convoy was attacked on a main road near the town of Baquba, part of the so-called "Sunni Triangle" north and west of Baghdad which is a bastion of anti-occupation sentiment.
The death brings to 65 the number of U.S. soldiers killed in attacks since Washington declared major combat operations over on May 1 following the war which ousted Saddam Hussein.
Guerrilla resistance and major violence such as last week's bombing of the U.N. office in Baghdad have provoked debate on whether Washington and its allies have enough troops on the ground with the right training to stabilize Iraq.
With the Bush administration signaling for the first time it might agree to a U.N.-sponsored multinational force in Iraq, the United States and Britain are expected to explore a new U.N. resolution to encourage nations to send troops.
In Britain, an opinion poll on Friday showed support for Prime Minister Tony Blair had plunged during the controversy surrounding the suicide of a weapons expert caught up in a row between the BBC and the government over the Iraq war. Blair's much-criticised media spokesman Alastair Campbell announced his resignation on Friday.
U.S. troops continued their hunt for Saddam and suspected guerrillas in the Sunni Triangle, from where the ex-dictator, himself a Sunni Muslim, drew much of his support.
Soldiers from the U.S. Army's 4th Infantry Division raided dozens of homes and suspected hideouts overnight, detaining 25 Iraqis, two of whom they described as "significant targeted individuals."
REUTERS Rtr 13:26 08-29-03
Copyright 2003 Reuters Limited. |
