Doubts over battle with messianic cult
BAGHDAD, Jan. 31 (UPI) -- Doubts are emerging over U.S. and Iraqi claims that hundreds of people killed in a battle in Najaf belonged to the "Soldiers of Heaven" messianic cult.

Iraqi security forces, with U.S. military support, are said to have killed 263 people and wounded 210.

But the authoritative Baghdad daily Azzaman and an Iraq website report that the story is a cover up for an unpremeditated massacre. Patrick Cockburn of the London Independent writing from Baghdad called the official account "a fabrication." The official version of the incident says Iraqi soldiers battled members of the messianic cult who were planning to disrupt the Shiite holy festival of Ashura. However, independent reports indicate the fighting occurred when members of the Hawatim tribe, on their way to the celebrations in Najaf, were attacked by Iraqi soldiers. The report from Baghdad says a clash broke out between the Shiite tribe members on a pilgrimage to Najaf and an Iraqi army checkpoint, when Iraqi soldiers fired on a car killing the tribe's chief, his wife and their driver. The tribesmen are reported to have retaliated by attacking the Iraqi military checkpoint. The Iraqis, claiming they were under attack from al-Qaida called for U.S. support. One American helicopter was hit and crashed killing two U.S. soldiers.

Reporters have been prevented from reaching the area making impossible for independent verification of the accounts. It would, however, explain the vast disparity between government casualties, who suffered less than 25 killed, and the 263 dead on the other side.

The Waco of Iraq?
US "Victory" Against Cult Leader was a Massacre
By PATRICK COCKBURN

Baghdad.

There are growing suspicions in Iraq that the official story of the battle outside Najaf between a messianic Iraqi cult and the Iraqi security forces supported by the US, in which 263 people were killed and 210 wounded, is a fabrication. The heavy casualties may be evidence of an unpremeditated massacre.

A picture is beginning to emerge of a clash between an Iraqi Shia tribe on a pilgrimage to Najaf and an Iraqi army checkpoint that led the US to intervene with devastating effect. The involvement of Ahmed al-Hassani (also known as Abu Kamar), who believed himself to be the coming Mahdi, or Messiah, appears to have been accidental.

The story emerging on independent Iraqi websites and in Arabic newspapers is entirely different from the government's account of the battle with the so-called "Soldiers of Heaven", planning a raid on Najaf to kill Shia religious leaders.
 

The cult denied it was involved in the fighting, saying it was a peaceful movement. The incident reportedly began when a procession of 200 pilgrims was on its way, on foot, to celebrate Ashura in Najaf. They came from the Hawatim tribe, which lives between Najaf and Diwaniyah to the south, and arrived in the Zarga area, one mile from Najaf at about 6am on Sunday. Heading the procession was the chief of the tribe, Hajj Sa'ad Sa'ad Nayif al-Hatemi, and his wife driving in their 1982 Super Toyota sedan because they could not walk. When they reached an Iraqi army checkpoint it opened fire, killing Mr Hatemi, his wife and his driver, Jabar Ridha al-Hatemi. The tribe, fully armed because they were travelling at night, then assaulted the checkpoint to avenge their fallen chief. Members of another tribe called Khaza'il living in Zarga tried to stop the fighting but they themselves came under fire. Meanwhile, the soldiers and police at the checkpoint called up their commanders saying they were under attack from al-Qai'da with advanced weapons. Reinforcements poured into the area and surrounded the Hawatim tribe in the nearby orchards. The tribesmen tried - in vain - to get their attackers to cease fire.

American helicopters then arrived and dropped leaflets saying: "To the terrorists, surrender before we bomb the area." The tribesmen went on firing and a US helicopter was hit and crashed killing two crewmen. The tribesmen say they do not know if they hit it or if it was brought down by friendly fire. The US aircraft launched an intense aerial bombardment in which 120 tribesmen and local residents were killed by 4am on Monday.

The messianic group led by Ahmad al-Hassani, which was already at odds with the Iraqi authorities in Najaf, was drawn into the fighting because it was based in Zarga and its presence provided a convenient excuse for what was in effect a massacre. The Hawatim and Khaza'il tribes are opposed to the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) and the Dawa Party, who both control Najaf and make up the core of the Baghdad government.
This account cannot be substantiated and is drawn from the Healing Iraq website and the authoritative Baghdad daily Azzaman. But it would explain the disparity between the government casualties - less than 25 by one account - and the great number of their opponents killed and wounded. The Iraqi authorities have sealed the site and are not letting reporters talk to the wounded.

Sectarian killings across Iraq also marred the celebration of the Shia ritual of Ashura. A suicide bomber killed 23 worshippers and wounded 57 others in a Shia mosque in Balad Ruz. Not far away in Khanaqin, in Diyala, a bomb killed 13 people, including three women, and wounded 29 others. In east Baghdad mortar bombs killed 17 people.
 

Najaf battle sign of Iraq’s chaos and clash of loyalties



By Abdulhussein Gazal

Azzaman, January 31, 2007
 

Truth is perhaps the main victim of Iraqi atrocities which exacerbated following the U.S.-led invasion itself based on lies and allegations. And as the dust settles over the battle of Najaf last Sunday, it emerges that the official story had no grain of truth. Iraqi officials said 263 members of a little known group they identified as the Soldiers of Heaven were killed. They and U.S. officials who sent in helicopter gun ships and tanks to back Iraqi forces were pleased of their ‘victory’. But who were those Soldiers from Heaven? And how could both Iraqi and U.S. officials persuade U.S. troops to market a story wholly based on lies? The ‘victory’ was short-lived and its impact has already backfired and it could not have come at a worse time for the United States as it is on the verge of launching a new military offensive to retake Baghdad. Now it appears that Iraqi troops had attacked a huge procession by Shiite tribesmen on their way to take part in the Ashura ceremonies.

The tribesmen were armed because their areas are among the most dangerous in Iraq. But the slogans they raised and the demands they made seem to have angered the government and prompted a violent response.

Tribal chieftains in Najaf, refusing to be named for security reasons, say the procession was organized by Shiite tribes who reject Iranian meddling in Iraqi affairs and oppose the Shiite factions loyal to Tehran.

Initially, the procession was made of members of al-Hawatma tribe. When they were attacked by Iraqi troops another powerful tribe, al-Khazaal, came to Hawatma’s defense.

When Iraqi troops felt they could not continue fighting on their own, they asked the Americans for aerial support, claiming that al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein loyalists were involved in the fighting.

The Soldiers of Heaven better known locally as Taifat al-Mahdiya or Mahdi group, who are mainly based in Basra, have flatly denied any involvement.

The group’s spokesman, Abdulimam Jabbar, said his members had nothing to do with the fighting in Najaf. “This is part of a propaganda campaign to discredit our group,” he said.
Jabbar, speaking in a mosque in Basra, said his group was “peaceful and does not believe at all in violence.”

According to the government 210 people were also injured in the fighting and 502 were taken prisoner.

The authorities have prevented reporters from talking to the injured or those captured.
 

200 militants killed in Iraq battle
 
Jan 29, 2007 05:54 PM
Sinan Salaheddin
Associated Press
BAGHDAD — Iraqi officials said Monday that U.S.-backed Iraqi troops had targeted a messianic cult called “Soldiers of Heaven” in a weekend battle that left 200 fighters dead, including the group’s leader, near the Shiite holy city of Najaf. A military commander said hundreds of gunmen planned to disguise themselves as pilgrims and kill clerics on the holiest day of the Shiite calendar.

The Iraqi government spokesman, Ali al-Dabbagh, said the raid on Sunday in date-palm orchards on the city’s outskirts was aimed against the fringe Shiite cult that some Iraqi officials said had links to Saddam Hussein loyalists and foreign fighters. Officials said the group, which included families, was hoping the violence it planned would force the return of the “hidden imam,” a ninth-century Shiite saint who Shiites believe will come again to bring peace and justice to the world.

U.S. and British jets played a major role in the fighting, dropping 230-kilogram bombs on the militants’ positions, but U.S. President George W. Bush said the battle was an indication that Iraqis were beginning to take control.

“My first reaction on this report from the battlefield is that the Iraqis are beginning to show me something,” Bush told NPR.

The fighting began Sunday and ended Monday. U.S. officials said an American military helicopter crashed during the battle, killing two soldiers on board, but gave no further details. Maj.-Gen. Othman al-Ghanemi, the Iraqi commander in charge of the Najaf region, said the aircraft was shot down. It was the second U.S. military helicopter to crash in eight days.

Both Mohammed al-Askari, the defence ministry spokesman, and al-Ghanemi said 200 terrorists were killed and 60 wounded, lowering previous estimates. Al-Ghanemi said 150 had been captured, while al-Askari put that figure at 120.

Authorities said Iraqi soldiers supported by U.S. aircraft fought all day Sunday with a large group of insurgents in the Zaraq area, about 20 kilometres northeast of Najaf.

Provincial Gov. Assad Sultan Abu Kilel said the insurgents had planned to attack Shiite pilgrims and senior clerics in Najaf during ceremonies marking Ashoura, the holiest day in the Shiite calendar commemorating the seventh-century death of Imam Hussein, grandson of the Prophet Muhammad. The celebration culminates Tuesday in huge public processions in Najaf, Karbala and other Shiite cities.

Al-Ghanemi said the army captured some 500 automatic rifles in addition to mortars, heavy machine guns and Russian-made Katyusha rockets in what amounted to a major test for Iraq’s new military as it works toward taking over responsibility for security from U.S.-led forces.

The commander said the leader of the group, called the Jund al-Samaa, or Soldiers of Heaven, was among those killed and identified him as an Iraqi named Ahmed Hassan al-Yamani, who went by several aliases and was armed with two pistols when he died. Abdul-Hussein Abtan, deputy governor of Najaf, said the cult leader had been detained twice in the past few years, although he did not say why.

Ahmed al-Fatlawi, a member of the Najaf provincial council, some of the gunmen brought their families with them in order to make it easier to enter the city. “The women have been detained,” he said. Al-Fatlawi added that they gunmen included Shiites, Sunnis, Iraqis, Arabs and foreigners. He did not give their nationalities.

Al-Ghanemi said the area where the men were staying was once run by Saddam’s al-Quds Army, a military organization the late president established in the 1990s. The commander said “the gunmen had recently dug trenches in preparation for the battle.” He added that the area of full of date palm groves. Other officials in Najaf said Saddam loyalists bought the groves six months ago.

Al-Ghanemi said 600 to 700 gunmen had planned to disguise themselves as pilgrims and attack Najaf on Tuesday, the day they believed that the Imam Mahdi, or the “hidden imam,” would reappear. He said leading Shiite ayatollahs consider such fringe elements as heretics.

Al-Ghamemi said their aim was to kill as many leading clerics as possible, including the main ayatollahs, which would include Iraq’s main Shiite spiritual leader Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. They even had leaflets saying that the hidden imam would reappear, he said.

Najaf government officials indicated the militants included both Shiite and Sunni extremists, as well as foreign fighters. Although Sunni Arabs have been the main force behind insurgent groups, there are a number of Shiite militant and splinter groups that have clashed from time to time with the government.

The mortar attacks and bombings appeared to be part of the sectarian reprisal killings that have pushed Iraq into civil warfare over the past year, violence that Bush hopes to quell by sending up to 21,500 more American soldiers to Baghdad and surrounding areas.

Iraq claims 300 insurgents dead in battle near Najaf
Iraqi officials claimed on Monday that at least 200 militants were killed in a fierce battle between US-backed Iraqi troops and a religious cult allegedly plotting to kill pilgrims at a major Shiite Muslim religious festival, while bombings and mortar attacks targeting Shiites elsewhere killed several people.


The leader of an Iraqi cult who claimed to be the Mahdi, a messiah-like figure in Islam, was killed in a battle on Sunday near Najaf with hundreds of his followers, Iraq's national security minister said on Monday. Women and children who joined 600-700 of his Soldiers of Heaven on the outskirts of the Shi'ite holy city may be among the casualties, Shirwan al-Waeli told Reuters. All those people not killed were in detention, many of them wounded.
Iraqi troops, backed by U.S. forces, confronted the group after learning it was planning an attack on the Shi'ite clerical establishment in Najaf on Monday. One of the signs of the coming of the Mahdi was to be the killing of the Ulema (hierarchy) in Najaf, Waeli said. This was a perverse claim. No sane person could believe it. Authorities have been on alert for days as hundreds of thousands of Shi'ite Muslims massed in the area to commemorate Ashura, the highpoint of their religious calendar, amid fears of attacks by Sunni Arab insurgents linked to al Qaeda. But Sunday's battle involved a group of a different sort, a cult which Iraqi officials said included both Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims as well as foreigners. He claimed to be the Mahdi, Waeli said of the cult's leader, adding that he had used the full name Mahdi bin Ali bin Ali bin Abi Taleb, claiming descent from the Prophet Mohammad.
"He was believed to be a 40-year-old from the nearby Shi'ite city of Diwaniya: He was killed," Waeli said. The final death toll, estimated by other Iraqi officials at 300 gunmen, was still being calculated, Waeli said, putting the initial figure at about 200. Searchers were still scouring the area where U.S. tanks, helicopters and jets reinforced Iraqi troops during some 24 hours of fighting. Though Sunnis and Shi'ites are engaged in an embryonic sectarian civil war in Iraq, there have been instances in Islamic history where groups drawn from both communities have challenged the authority of the existing clerical leadership.


Soldiers of heaven
The U.S. military declined to provide details. It officially handed over responsibility for Najaf province, in southern Iraq, to Iraqi security forces last month and withdrew most U.S. troops, to be recalled only to help in emergencies. A government statement said the group was planning a dangerous criminal act in Najaf. "An ideologically perverted group ... tried to insult an Islamic holy symbol, the Imam Mahdi, and use him as an ideological base to recruit followers," the statement said.

Iraq dead

Waeli said the death toll among Iraqi forces was around 10 soldiers and police. "Najaf's police chief was wounded," he said.
Two U.S. soldiers were killed when their attack helicopter came down during the fighting, the U.S. military said. Iraqi officials and witnesses said it appeared to have been shot down. "Some of the fighters wore headbands describing themselves as Soldiers of Heaven ," Iraqi officials said. "It was not clear how many women and children were present: It is very sad to bring families onto the battlefield," Waeli said.

When police first approached the camp and tried to call on the group to leave, their leader replied: "I am the Mahdi and I want you to join me," Waeli said, adding: "Today was supposed to be the day of his coming."
Other Iraqi officials said on Sunday that a man named Ahmed Hassani al-Yemeni, who had been working from an office in Najaf until it was closed down earlier this month, had assembled the group, claiming to be the messenger of the Mahdi. Among previous violent instances of people saying they were the Mahdi were an opposition movement to British imperial forces in Sudan in the 1880s and a group of several hundred, including women, that took over the Grand Mosque in Mecca in 1979.

Hundreds dead in Najaf battle as Iraq marks Ashura

By Rami Amichai
NAJAF, Iraq (Reuters) - U.S. and Iraqi forces killed some 300 gunmen from an apocalyptic Muslim cult in a day-long battle involving U.S. tanks and aircraft near the Shi'ite holy city of Najaf, Iraqi police, army and political sources said.

Najaf governor Asaad Abu Gilel told Reuters the authorities had uncovered a plot to kill leading Shi'ite clerics in Najaf on Monday, to coincide with the climax of Ashura, the annual Shi'ite rite marking a 7th century battle which entrenched the schism between Shi'ite and Sunni Islam.

Up to 1.5 millions pilgrims gathered amid tight security in Kerbala, 70 km north of Najaf, to mark the climax of Ashura, the highpoint of the Shi'ite religious calendar.


Special police commandos stand guard on top of their vehicle in Najaf, 160 km south of Baghdad, January 28, 2007. U.S. and Iraqi forces killed some 300 gunmen from an apocalyptic Muslim cult in a day-long battle involving U.S. tanks and aircraft near the Shi'ite holy city, Iraqi police, army and political sources said. (REUTERS/Ali Abu Shish)
Ambulances accompanied by Iraqi troops went to recover the casualties from the battle in Najaf as a sand storm shrouded the city in an orange mist on Monday. A Reuters reporter saw around 100 gunmen who had been detained, some of them wounded.

The U.S. military said it was an ongoing operation so it could not provide any details.

The origins of the fighters were unclear, but Iraqi political and security sources said they were followers of a shadowy Muslim cult leader and some of the dead wore headbands declaring themselves a "Soldier of Heaven".

An Iraqi army source said U.S. forces took control of the operation on Sunday and bombed the area overnight.

helicopter

Police Colonel Ali Nomas said 300 to 350 gunmen had been killed and dozens more arrested. He said three Iraqi soldiers were killed and six more missing, and five policemen were killed. Another 40 Iraqi police and soldiers were wounded.

According to one Iraqi political source, hundreds of fighters, drawn from both Sunni and Shi'ite communities, fought throughout Sunday and late into the night.
f-16's

The U.S. military officially handed over responsibility for Najaf province to Iraqi security forces last month, withdrawing most U.S. troops, to be recalled only to help in emergencies.

ASHURA

Initially on Sunday the governor described the fighters as Sunnis, the majority in the Arab world and the once dominant minority in Iraq, where Shi'ites have been in the ascendant since the U.S. invasion of 2003. The two sects are embroiled in conflict that many fear is descending into all-out civil war.

But political and security sources said they were followers of an apocalyptic cult leader claiming to be the vanguard of the Mahdi -- a messiah-like figure in Islam whose coming heralds the start of perfect world justice.

Similar violent cults have been a feature of Islamic history. They have declared temporal Muslim leaders illegitimate infidels and have drawn followers from both Sunni and Shi'ite believers, proclaiming a unity of inspiration from Mohammad.

Among other violent instances associated with proclamations of the coming of the Mahdi were opposition to British rule in Sudan in the 1880s and the siege of the Grand Mosque at Mecca in 1979, when hundreds of men occupied Islam's holiest site.

In today's Iraq, the powerful Mehdi Army militia of Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr shares the name but not such ideas.

A U.S. military spokesman said he could not confirm any details of who the gunmen were.

Up to 1.5 millions pilgrims gathered in Kerbala for Ashura and 11,000 troops and police were deployed. More than 100 people were killed there by suicide bombers three years ago, as Shi'ites marked the first Ashura after the end of heavy restrictions imposed by Saddam Hussein's Sunni-dominated state.

Shiyaa Mousa, 49, a tribal leader who was in Kerbala, said he was worried insurgents would attack. "They started in Najaf yesterday and they will do it tomorrow, God forbid," he said.

(Additional reporting by Aseel Kami, Ross Colvin, Mariam Karouny, Claudia Parsons and Alastair Macdonald in Baghdad)

Iraqi cult leader killed in Najaf battle, 200 dead



The leader of an Iraqi cult who claimed to be the Mahdi, a messiah-like figure in Islam, was killed in a battle on Sunday near Najaf with hundreds of his followers, Iraq's national security minister said yesterday.

Women and children who joined 600-700 of his "Soldiers of Heaven" on the outskirts of the Shi'ite holy city may be among the casualties, Shirwan al-Waeli told Reuters. All those people not killed were in detention, many of them wounded.

Iraqi troops, backed by US forces, confronted the group after learning it was planning an attack on the Shi'ite clerical establishment in Najaf yesterday.

"One of the signs of the coming of the Mahdi was to be the killing of the Ulema (hierarchy) in Najaf," Waeli said. "This was a perverse claim. No sane person could believe it."

Authorities have been on alert for days as hundreds of thousands of Shi'ite Muslims massed in the area to commemorate Ashura, the high point of their religious calendar, amid fears of attacks by Sunni Arab insurgents linked to al Qaida.

But Sunday's battle involved a group of a different sort, a cult which Iraqi officials said included both Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims as well as foreigners.

"He claimed to be the Mahdi," Waeli said of the cult's leader, adding that he had used the full name Mahdi bin Ali bin Ali bin Abi Taleb, claiming descent from the Prophet Mohammad.

He was believed to be a 40-year-old from the nearby Shi'ite city of Diwaniya: "He was killed," Waeli said.

The final death toll, estimated by other Iraqi officials at 300 gunmen, was still being calculated, Waeli said, putting the initial figure at about 200. Searchers were still scouring the area where US tanks, helicopters and jets reinforced Iraqi troops during some 24 hours of fighting.

Though Sunnis and Shi'ites are engaged in an embryonic sectarian civil war in Iraq, there have been instances in Islamic history where groups drawn from both communities have challenged the authority of the existing clerical leadership.

The US military declined to provide details. It officially handed over responsibility for Najaf province, in southern Iraq, to Iraqi security forces last month and withdrew most US troops, to be recalled only to help in emergencies.

A government statement said the group was planning "a dangerous criminal act" in Najaf.

"An ideologically perverted group ... tried to insult an Islamic holy symbol, the Imam Mahdi, and use him as an ideological base to recruit followers," the statement said.

Waeli said the death toll among Iraqi forces was around 10 soldiers and police. Najaf's police chief was wounded, he said.

Two US soldiers were killed when their attack helicopter came down during the fighting, the US military said. Iraqi officials and witnesses said it appeared to have been shot down.

Some of the fighters wore headbands describing themselves as "Soldiers of Heaven", Iraqi officials said.

When police first approached the camp and tried to call on the group to leave, their leader replied: "I am the Mahdi and I want you to join me," Waeli said, adding: "Today was supposed to be the day of his coming."

At least 300 dead in the battle of Najaf
A new fundamentalist group calling itself ‘Soldiers of Heaven’ planned to kill several Shia clerics. Attack was carried out by Iraqi army with US air support.


Najaf (AsiaNews/Agencies) – At least 300 Sunni and Shiite militants belonging to a new militia died near the holy city of Najaf in a joint operation by Iraqi forces and the US air force, local political and military sources report. The battle, which began yesterday morning, went on till dawn today.

An Iraqi army source said US forces took control of the operation on Sunday and ordered continued bombings. Two Americans were killed when their attack helicopter went down. Three Iraqi soldiers and five policemen were killed. Hundreds were wounded on both sides.

Details about the operation remain murky. According to local sources, it was a preventive attack by Iraqi forces after a plot was uncovered to kill some Shia clerics in Najaf where Ali, the first imam in Shia Islam is buried.

The rebels, who call themselves ‘Soldiers of Heaven’, apparently included Sunnis and Shiites as well as foreigners. About 25 were captured, including a Sudanese national. The group is led by Imam Ahmed ibn al-Hassani who was present during the attack but remains at large.

The governor of Najaf province said a group of terrorists had gathered in Zarqa near Kufa to attack some important Shia clerics in the Holy City.

For days security forces have been on maximum alert in the south to prevent attacks during the Shia celebration of Ashura, which commemorates the death of Hussein, son of Ali, whom Shiites consider the true successor to Muhammad.

The event was banned under Saddam Hussein’s regime and in the last few years it has been the scene of bloody attacks. Its climax is scheduled for tomorrow.
IRAQ BATTLE CLAIMS 200 INSURGENTS

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Permanent link | no responses | Published on: Tuesday, 30th January, 2007

At least 200 Shia militants allegedly linked to Al Qaeda were killed in a fierce battle with Iraqi and US forces near the Shia holy city of Najaf, officials said yesterday. An Iraqi official said the militants, said to belong to a sect calling itself “Soldiers of Heaven” planned to carry out attacks on Shia clerics and seize control of holy cities.
Iraq was also rocked by a spate of attacks yesterday that left 22 people dead as Shia pilgrims prepared to mark the mourning rite of Ashura, the most sacred ceremony on their religious calendar.
Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said among those killed in the Najaf battle was the sect leader who reportedly claimed to be a lieutenant of Imam Mahdi, a ninth century Shia spiritual leader.
US aircraft backing the Iraqi troops bombed militant positions, leaving between 200 and 300 dead in one of the biggest battles in recent months, according to various tolls given by officials.
Defence minister spokesman Mohammed Al-Askari said 200 were killed and 120 arrested while Najaf government spokesman Ahmed Duaible said around 300 militants had been killed and 13 arrested.
“The body of the leader of the organisation was found and identified by some of his captured fighters,” a source in the Najaf governorate said.
He was variously identifed as Iraqi national Samer Abu Kamar, Ali bin Ali bin Abi Talib, or Ahmed bin al-Hassan, nicknamed Al-Yamani, and one official said he may be of Lebanese origin.
Police in Najaf said he established his cult after buying eight farms in Zarqa two years ago.
Askari said security forces had also confiscated 500 weapons and 11 mortar tubes along with pick-up trucks mounted with machine guns and documents.
Abdel Hussein Attan, deputy governor of Najaf, said the slain militants were linked to Al Qaeda in Iraq.
“I have come to the total conviction from what I have seen with my own eyes on the ground that Al Qaeda is behind this group,” Attan told reporters.
“Based on the confessions of interrogated militants and other information, this well-structured group intended to attack Shia clerics and take control of Najaf and its holy sites,” he added.
“It appears to be a Shia group but its deep-rooted conviction is different.”
Al Qaeda in Iraq is made up of Sunni extremists who profess an extreme hatred of Shia, whom they consider heretics. Dabbagh said the group appeared to have both “internal and external terror links.

 

Cult chief dies in Najaf battle
NAJAF: At least 300 Shi'ite militants, including a religious cult leader claiming to be a descendant of the Prophet Mohammed, were killed in a fierce battle with Iraqi and US forces near Shi'ite Islam's holiest city of Najaf while 36 others were killed in violencce elsewhere in Iraq, officials said yesterday.

More than 100 militants were taken into custody.

An Iraqi official said the militants, who belonged to a sect calling itself "Soldiers of Heaven," planned to carry out attacks on Shi'ite clerics and seize control of holy cities.

Iraq was also rocked by a spate of attacks yesterday that left 36 people dead.

Iraqi government spokesman Ali Al Dabbagh said among those killed in the Najaf battle was the sect leader who reportedly claimed to be a lieutenant of Imam Mahdi, a ninth century Shi'ite spiritual leader who vanished as a boy and is expected to return to earth just before the end of time.

US and British jets bombed and strafed the fighters with guided bombs, rockets and cannon shells, a US military statement said.

The attack left between 200 and 300 dead in one of the biggest battles in recent months, according to various tolls given by officials.

Defence ministry spokesman Mohammed Al Askari said 200 were killed and around 250 arrested, many found hiding in tunnels, while Najaf government spokesman Ahmed Duaible said around 300 militants were killed and 13 arrested.

"The body of the leader of the organisation was found and identified by some of his captured fighters," a source in the Najaf governorate said.

He was variously identified as Iraqi national Samer Abu Kamar, Ali bin Ali bin Abi Talib, or Ahmed bin Al Hassan, nicknamed Al Yamani, and one official said he may be of Lebanese origin.

Police said he established his cult after buying eight farms in Zarqa, north of Najaf, two years ago.

Abdel Hussein Attan, deputy governor of Najaf, said the slain militants were linked to Al Qaeda in Iraq.

"I have come to the total conviction from what I have seen with my own eyes on the ground that Al Qaeda is behind this group," Attan said.

"Based on the confessions of interrogated militants and other information, this well-structured group intended to attack Shi'ite clerics and take control of Najaf and its holy sites," he added.

Al Qaeda in Iraq is made up of Sunni extremists who profess an extreme hatred of Shi'ites, whom they consider heretics.

Dabbagh said the group appeared to have both "internal and external terror links, adding: "The quantity of weapons they had indicated a considerable support."

 

Hundreds of gunmen and supporters of an apocalyptic Muslim cult have been reported dead yesterday after a battle with US and Iraqi soldiers on the outskirts of one of Islam's holiest cities.

Women and children with the fighters of the Soldiers of Heaven outside Najaf were believed to be among those killed after coming under sustained fire from warplanes, helicopter gunships and tanks.

The cult's leader, who claimed to be the Mahdi, a messiah-like figure who Muslims believe will right injustices in the world, was said to have died in the battle, which lasted 24 hours.

Iraqi officials said 300 were killed with 200 more wounded or captured.

Many of the fighters wore headbands declaring themselves Soldiers of Heaven.

Iraqi authorities claim they were planning to massacre clerics as hundreds of thousands of pilgrims massed in the Shi'ite holy city to commemorate Ashura, which marks the death in battle of Mohammad's grandson in 680.

Many Muslims believe the Mahdi will return to lead a battle in Najaf against the descendants of Mohammad's arch-enemy.

Few details of the fighting 100 miles south of Baghdad were being released last night as 'mopping-up' operations continued.

Two Americans died when their helicopter was shot down while ten Iraqi soldiers and police were also killed.

The battle is one of the strangest since Saddam Hussein was ousted four years ago with hundreds of fighters, both Sunni and Shia, apparently prepared to sacrifice themselves.

Iraq's national security minister Shirwan al-Waeli said the cult's leader had been Mahdi bin Ali bin Ali bin Abi Taleb, who claimed to be the Mahdi, or hidden Imam, a descendant of the Prophet Mohammad.

The last of the 12 Shi'ite imams, Mohammed al-Mahdi disappeared as a child in the year 941, and some Muslims believe that he will one day return as a saviour of mankind.

One of the signs of the coming of the Mahdi was to be the killing of the clerics in Najaf, Waeli said.

"Ideologically, this group tries to use a sacred Muslim symbol who is Imam Mahdi al-Muntadar to lure more recruits," said a government spokesman.

Intelligence operations had gone on for ten days and indicated cult members believed that if leading clerics were killed in Najaf it would be a sign the Mahdi had returned to bring peace to the region.

Their aim was to slip into the religious celebrations and kill as many clerics as possible.

The group also had leaflets saying the hidden imam was to return.

Waeli said that when police first approached the cult members' camp to tell the group to leave, their leader said: "I am the Mahdi and I want you to join me."

Fearing an attack on pilgrims and clerics, Iraqi soldiers, backed by US air power, attacked at dawn on Sunday.

Militants hiding in orchards fought back with automatic weapons, sniper rifles and rockets.

Former Saddam loyalists and foreign fighters were said to be among them.

The US military officially handed over responsibility for Najaf province to Iraqi security forces last month, withdrawing most American troops, who were to be recalled only to help in emergencies.

Meanwhile, mortar rounds rained down on a Shi'ite neighborhood in the Sunnidominated town of Jurf al-Sakhar, 40 miles south of Baghdad yesterday, killing ten, including three children and four women.

The strike came a day after mortar shells hit the courtyard of a girls' school in a mostly Sunni Arab neighborhood of Baghdad, killing five pupils and wounding 20.

A parked car bomb also struck a bus carrying Shi'ites to a holy shrine in northern Baghdad, killing at least four and wounding six.

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In the Monitor
Tuesday, 01/30/07
 
Battle suggests new sectarian divides in Iraq
Sunday's attack on Shiites in Najaf may have been launched by the Shiite 'Army of Heaven' sect.
By Dan Murphy | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
CAIRO - What precisely happened near the Shiite shrine city of Najaf Sunday is still being sorted out, but it seems likely that at its root was an unusual new wrinkle in Iraqi violence: a Shiite plan to attack Shiites.

A battle that lasted for more than 12 hours in the nearby village of Zarqa ended with a US helicopter being shot down and a claim by local authorities that more than 200 militants were slain in the fighting. But who were the militants?
 
Though the majority Shiite province has a problem with assassinations and gangster-style extortion, Sunni Arab insurgents are rarely active there, and fighting on this scale had not been witnessed in the area for more than a year.

The incident is a reminder of the swirling agendas now at play in Iraq and the turbulent political waters US troops are wading into as more soldiers arrive and President Bush has vowed to stand by Shiite Islamist Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

Religious ideologies and classic power plays are now converging in Iraq, leading to what at times seem to be multiple, parallel conflicts: Sunni Arab insurgents who want to establish an Islamic state fight US Marines in Anbar Province; death squads associated with militant Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr stalk the streets of Baghdad, targeting both Sunni and Shiite political rivals; mostly Sunni Arab nationalists with ties to Saddam Hussein's Baath party seek to oust US forces from the country.

Following Sunday's deadly battle, Najaf Governor Asaad Abu Khalil originally implied that the fighters were foreign Arabs of the sort usually associated with Al Qaeda and that their intention was to disrupt the religious festival of Ashura with plans to attack both pilgrims and senior ayatollahs in southern Iraqi city of Najaf, the principal seat of Shiite religious learning in Iraq.

But his office has since backed off from those claims, and it now appears the gunmen – who killed or wounded dozens of Iraqi soldiers in the fighting as well as killing the two pilots of the downed US helicopter – were Shiites motivated by extreme religious ideology.

The central Iraqi government says the fighters are members of a millenarian Shiite group called the Jund al-Sama, or Army of Heaven, and that they were plotting to kill the senior ayatollahs in Najaf, chief among them Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, to prepare the way for the Mahdi, a messiah figure for many Shiites.

They believe the Mahdi ascended to heaven in the 9th century and will return to earth to usher in a final confrontation between good and evil that will end with a 1,000-year reign of peace, which will be followed by the end of the world.

According to Iraqi Army Maj. Gen. Othman al-Ghanami, quoted by the Associated Press, the group was heavily armed. He said 500 rifles were confiscated along with mortars, heavy calibre machine guns, and Katyusha rockets. That such a little known group should be so well armed is a sign of the myriad threats to the country's eventual pacification.

Ashura commemorates Imam Hussein, grandson of the prophet Muhammad and the most revered of Shiite saints, and is the occasion of public flagellation and high emotion.

Local authorities said the gunmen were planning the attack because they believed the Mahdi was due to return Sunday, and were seeking to remove potential rivals.

"In Shiite Islam there is this very strong millenarian trend, similar to Christian movements that think Christ is about to return,'' says Juan Cole, a professor of Middle East history at the University of Michigan. "So just like some millenarian evangelicals think that the pope is the antichrist, they would see the ayatollahs as ... usurpers of his rightful role."

While Professor Cole is skeptical of the view that such millenarian movements are always triggered by social or economic upheaval, he says, "I'm comfortable in saying that in this particular case this movement that's fighting outside of Najaf is certainly enabled by the chaos in Iraq for the past decade and a half."

Such movements have ebbed and flowed throughout Shiite history and Shiite religious politics have been marked by violent power grabs for centuries. Cole points to the Babi Movement in the 1840s and 1850s in Iran and Iraq as a good example. The movement attracted vast numbers of followers, mostly from the urban lower and lower-middle classes, who believed that the Mahdi was about to return and rid them of their unjust rulers. The group's followers targeted the Shiite religious hierarchy of the time, and sought to assassinate the Shah of Iran in 1852.

General Ghanami said the leader of the group was killed in the fighting, and identified him as Abu Qamar al-Yamani. The London-based Arabic daily Al Hayat reported that the Army of Heaven is loyal to Mahmoud al-Hassani al-Sarkhi, a cultish Shiite leader whose followers have clashed with both foreign troops and supporters of mainline Shiite leaders in Iraq numerous times since the US invasion.

His supporters have fought with those of other militant Shiite clerics, most notably those of Ayatollah Muhammad Yaqubi, whose men dominate the politics of the southern city of Najaf, and also sought to take control of the main shrine in Karbala last summer from supporters of Ayatollah Sistani, the most revered cleric in Iraq.

 

More than 300 militants are dead after a pitched battle against US and Iraqi troops today.Apparently a leader named Ahmed Hassani al-Yemeni had a set to at a checkpoint which turned into an all out firefight….with al-Yemeni eventually running for his life, as his “militants” had the living shit were pounded out of them by a joint fighting force.

One helicopter was lost, with two dead US soldiers, as well as three policemen dead and thirty wounded.

The Iraqi forces stood their ground and fought like lions, this engagement amongst others can only serve to boost their morale and prove that they are ready to take the field themselves. This is their nation, their destiny, and I could not be prouder to see them standing toe to toe with “militants” whose sole objective was to kill as many Iraqis as they could.

In another section of Iraq today, A neighborhood north of Ramadi celebrated the reopening of a school Tuesday.

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 BAGHDAD, Iraq — Accounts of the bloody battle near Najaf have produced more questions than answers, raising doubts about Iraqi security forces' performance and concern over tensions within the majority Shiite community.

Among the questions: How did a messianic Shiite cult, the "Soldiers of Heaven," accumulate so many weapons and — if Iraqi accounts are accurate — display such military skills? Iraqi forces prevailed only after U.S. and British jets blasted the militants with rockets, machine gunfire and 500-pound bombs. Both U.S. and Iraqi reinforcements had to be sent to the fight.

It's also unclear how a shadowy cult that few Iraqis had ever heard of managed to assemble such a force seemingly without attracting the attention of the authorities earlier. Iraqi officials say the cult planned to slaughter pilgrims and leading clerics at Shiite religious ceremonies Tuesday — only two days after police and soldiers moved to arrest them.

If the "Soldiers of Heaven" were able to accomplish all this, how many other fringe groups may be operating beneath the radar, especially in the politically factious Shiite community of southern Iraq? Did the cultists have links to other established insurgent or militia groups?

Virtually all the information about the cult has come from Iraqi officials, who have released incomplete and sometimes contradictory accounts.

Based on the information released, the cult numbered in the hundreds and may have included some Sunnis. Iraqi officials identified the leader as Diya Abdul-Zahra Kadhim, 37, a Shiite from the southern city of Hillah who was killed in the fighting. Some Iraqi reports said he wanted to unleash violence to force the return of the "Hidden Imam," a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad who disappeared as a child in the 9th century.

Shiites believe the Hidden Imam will return to restore peace and justice to the world at a time when the Muslim community is in the gravest danger. Some officials suggested the leader considered himself the Hidden Imam.

In Basra, a Shiite cleric said the "Soldiers of Heaven" is the armed wing of a movement led by Ahmed bin al-Hassan al-Baghdadi, an obscure Shiite cleric also known as al-Yamani. The movement believes the return of the Hidden Imam is imminent. The cleric spoke on condition of anonymity because he did not want to be identified with Shiite factionalism.

Little is known about al-Baghdadi, who is believed to be from the southern city of Diwaniyah and who, according to some clerics, has told his followers he is in touch with the Hidden Imam. Some clerics said he founded his movement about eight years ago and has several thousands followers in southern Iraq.

Iraqi authorities said they became concerned about the cult when an informant told them last week that it was about to launch attacks during Tuesday's festival of Ashoura. They planned to slip into Najaf with the hundreds of thousands of pilgrims that descend on shrine cities for Shiite festivals.

The alleged plot was reminiscent of the 1979 attack in which Sunni extremists seized the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, the holiest site in Islam, taking hundreds of pilgrims hostage to protest alleged corruption in the Saudi royal family. Saudi forces stormed the mosque two weeks later, killing hundreds.

U.S. officials praised the role of Iraqi soldiers, most of whom are Shiite forces, for confronting Shiite gunmen.

"The aggressive manner in which the Iraqi soldiers performed north of Najaf going after the anti-Iraqi forces was impressive," Col. Michael Garrett, commander of the 4th Brigade Combat Team (Airborne), 25th Infantry Division, said in a statement.

Clearly, however, the Iraqis underestimated the Najaf cultists.

Units from the Iraqi army, police and the paramilitary national police went to the group's hide-out 12 miles northeast of Najaf early Sunday but came under a ferocious attack, according to Iraqi authorities. The Iraqis called for air support, and U.S. and British jets responded.

Still, the cultists could not be dislodged. Reinforcements from Iraq's elite Scorpion Brigade and the U.S. Army's 25th Division were sent to the fight. A U.S. Army helicopter was shot down, and the two American crew members were killed. Fighting continued until before dawn Monday, nearly 24 hours after the clash.

The deputy governor of Najaf, Abdul-Hussein Abtan, said Tuesday that more than 300 militants were killed and about 650 were arrested. Eleven Iraqi troops were killed and 30 wounded, he said.

The Shiite-dominated government maintains the cult had links to al-Qaida in Iraq, which seems unusual considering the Sunni group's hatred of Shiites as heretics and collaborators with the U.S.

Nevertheless, the "Soldiers of Heaven" may have had ties to Saddam Hussein loyalists. Najaf officials said they were camped on land owned by a Saddam supporter. The area was once under the control of the al-Quds army, a force raised by Saddam in the 1990s.

It was unclear whether any former al-Quds members, who would have received extensive military training, were part of the cult.

In any case, it appears that the fighting had little to do with either the Sunni-led insurgency or the sectarian bloodletting between Shiites and Sunnis in the Baghdad area. More likely, the battle stemmed from rivalries within the Shiite community, which have led to armed clashes in the past in major southern cities.

Those internal tensions may increase if the Iraqi government bows to U.S. pressure and cracks down on Shiite militias.

"It seems most likely that this was Shiite-on-Shiite violence, with millenarian cultists making an attempt to march on Najaf during the chaos of the ritual season," Juan Cole, a Shiite scholar at the University of Michigan, said on his Web site. "The dangers of Shiite-on-Shiite violence in Iraq are substantial, as this episode demonstrated."

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BAGHDAD: Iraqi forces were surprised and nearly overwhelmed by the ferocity of an obscure renegade militia in a weekend battle near the holy city of Najaf and needed far more help from American forces than previously disclosed, American and Iraqi officials said Monday.

They said American ground troops — and not just air support as reported Sunday — were mobilized to help the Iraqi soldiers, who appeared to have dangerously underestimated the strength of the militia, which calls itself the Soldiers of Heaven and had amassed hundreds of heavily armed fighters.

Iraqi government officials said the group apparently was preparing to storm Najaf, a holy city dear to Shiite Islam, occupy the sacred Imam Ali mosque and assassinate the religious hierarchy there, including the revered leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, during a Shiite holiday when many pilgrims visit.

"This group had more capabilities than the government," said Abdul Hussein Abtan, the deputy governor of Najaf Province, at a news conference.

Only a month ago, in an elaborate handover ceremony, the American command transferred security authority over Najaf to the Iraqis. The Americans said at the time that they would remain available to assist the Iraqis in the event of a crisis.

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The Iraqis and Americans eventually prevailed in the battle. But the Iraqi security forces' miscalculations about the group's strength and intentions raised troubling questions about their ability to recognize and deal with a threat.

The battle also brought into focus the reality that some of the power struggles in Iraq are among Shiites, not just between Shiites and Sunnis. The Soldiers of Heaven is considered to be at least partly or wholly run by Shiites.

Among the troubling questions raised is how hundreds of armed men were able to set up such an elaborate encampment, which Iraqi officials said included tunnels, trenches and a series of blockades, only 10 miles northeast of Najaf. After the fight was over, Iraqi officials said they discovered at least two antiaircraft weapons as well as 40 heavy machine guns.

The government knew that the Soldiers of Heaven had set up camp in the area, but officials said they thought they were there to worship together.

Abtan said the Iraqi forces later decided to move on the group because an informer said Sunday was "zero hour" and the government noticed more men streaming into the area.

"If this operation had succeeded, it would have been a chance of a lifetime for them," he said.

The Iraqis initially sent a battalion from their Eighth Army Division, along with police forces, but they were quickly overwhelmed, according to an Iraqi commander at the scene. The battalion began to retreat but was soon surrounded and pinned down, and had to call in American air support to keep the enemy from overrunning its position.

American Apache attack helicopters and F-16s, as well as British fighter jets, flew low over the farms where the enemy had set up its encampments and attacked, dropping 500-pound bombs on the encampments. The Iraqi forces were still unable to advance, and they called in support from both an elite Iraqi unit known as the Scorpion Brigade, which is based to the north in Hilla, and from American ground troops.

Around noon, elements of the American Fourth Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division were dispatched from near Baghdad.

After an American helicopter was shot down at 1:30 p.m., some of those soldiers helped secure the crash site and recover the bodies of the two American soldiers killed in the crash, according to a statement by the American military. Others joined in the effort to combat the renegade militia, the statement said.

A commander in the Scorpion Brigade said the combined American and Iraqi forces killed 470 people.

He also said some of the dead Soldiers of Heaven fighters were found bound together at the ankles and suggested that the chains had probably been used to keep people from fleeing and to keep them moving as one unified group.

Government estimates of the number of fighters killed ranged from 120 to 400.

An Iraqi military official said at least 25 security force members were killed in the battle.

Iraqi officials said Monday that they had killed the leader of the militia in the weekend fighting, identifying him as a man who went by the name Ahmed Hassan al-Yamani, but whose real name was Diyah Abdul Zahraa Khadom.

However, a Shiite cleric who has had contact with the group said the real leader was Ahmad bin al-Hassan al-Basri. The cleric said he believed that Basri was alive and probably hiding near Karbala.

Basri, while unknown to the average Iraqi, is relatively well known among the clerical hierarchy in Najaf, according to several clerics interviewed for this article.

The clerics who were interviewed said that Basri was a student of Moktada al-Sadr's father, a revered cleric, and that Basri and the senior Sadr had a split in the early 1990s.

The governor of Najaf, Asad Abu Ghalal, in an interview on national television, said government intelligence officials told him that the Soldiers of Heaven have had ties with the government of Saddam Hussein as far back as 1993. He also said that the farmland where the militia had set up camp had been bought by a former Hussein loyalist, although he said that did not initially raise concerns about the group's intentions.

Government officials were quick to point the finger at Al Qaeda, alleging that it provided financing for the group. But numerous Shiite clerics, seeking anonymity for fear of contradicting the government, said it was highly unlikely that Al Qaeda, a Sunni group, would link up with a Shiite messianic group.

Officials in the Shiite-dominated government are loath to detail internal rivalries in their community, but in the past three years there have been several clashes between rival factions, and the deaths of two senior Shiite ayatollahs have been linked to internal struggles for dominance.

The often bloody internal rivalries have been overshadowed by the more overt Sunni-Shiite war being fought daily in Baghdad and in other mixed cities.

Jail Sentence Over Iraq Fraud

WASHINGTON, Jan. 29 (Reuters) — A former Defense Department contractor was sentenced Monday to nine years in prison and ordered to forfeit $3.6 million for his role in a bribery and fraud scheme involving contracts to reconstruct Iraq.

Justice Department officials said the contractor, Robert Stein, 52, of Fayetteville, N.C., also was sentenced to three years of probation after his release from prison.

Stein, the comptroller and funding officer for the Coalition Provisional Authority — South Central Region in 2003 and 2004, pleaded guilty a year ago to criminal charges including bribery, money laundering and conspiracy. He admitted that he conspired, along with others, including several United States Army officers, to rig bids to steer contracts to a certain contractor.

Qais Mizher and an Iraqi employee of The New York Times in Najaf contributed reporting.

Qais Mizher and an Iraqi employee of The New York Times in Najaf contributed reporting.

The recent bloody battle in Najaf was a Shiite uprising against Iranian (Safawid) infiltration, control, and hegemony in Iraq and was not initiated by Sunnis as western media has led us to believe, according to Iraqi Parliament Member Mohammed Al-Daini and the Iraqi information center in Europe, AlMalaf (use Google's translate function if you don't read Arabic), who talked by phone with leaders of the uprising.


The fighting highlights the rivalry between the Arab religious Shiite leaders in Najaf, and the Persian religious leaders in Qum, a sacred city in Iran.

According to reports by Al-Daini and AlMalaf, the Iraqi/Arab Shiite cleric Mahmoud Al-Sarkhi Al-Hasani initiated the fighting.

Al-Hasani is an important Iraqi Arab ayatollah whose forces now control the police in Najaf, which is home to another important Shiite leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani, an Iranian Shiite.

Al-Hasani then issued a warning to all non-Iraqi ayatollahs -- including Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani, an Iranian Shiite from Najaf-- and all Iraqi officials of Iranian blood and origin who had entered Iraq after 2003, to leave Iraq, especially Najaf within hours. Only Iraqi ayatollahs would be permitted to stay in Najaf.

Sources say that Al-Hasani's followers have eradicated many Iranians in the Najaf police force. In addition, they are now in control of 19 police vehicles and have burned 11 of them. Apparently, the governor of Najaf, Asaad Abu Gilel who is suspected by some of being an Iranian intelligence officer, has called upon the U.S. for assistance.

Recent reports in the western media have been confusing and have said that initiation of the fighting in the Shiite Holy City of Najaf was attributed to an unknown small apocalyptic cult called the Soldiers of Heaven in an attempt to kill Shiite religious leaders in Najaf as part of a wider Sunni effort to disrupt Ashura. The Washington Post reported that scores of the insurgents were killed by Iraqi soldiers, backed by U.S. helicopters. And later, the New York Times stated that Iraqi and American officials said that more American forces were involved in the fighting that had been initially reported, and that ground troop were involved as well as air support. Today, it was reported that the instigators were part of an extremist, "messianic cult," and that the fighting may have been among extremist Shiite groups.

This burgeoning confusion appears to stem from the western media's reliance on Iraqi and American government sources for their stories, often to the point of ignoring that there are huge and real divisions among the Shiites in Iraq that deal with rivalry rather than extremism.

Several months ago, there was a little-written story about the followers of Ayatollah Al-Hasani who burned two buildings at the Iranian consulate in Basra (see Professor Juan Cole's articles), indicating that this is not the first time the Shia have incited violence in reaction to increasing Iranian influence over their country.

The rivalry between the Arab Shiite and Persian Shiite is affecting the war in Iraq and indications appear that conflict will increase if the Iraqi government continues to be comprised of those with Iranian ties.

Written in collaboration with Dal LaMagna and Jennifer Hicks


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Hundreds killed in Najaf battle
Tuesday, January 30, 2007


The leader of an Iraqi cult who claimed to be the Mahdi, a messiah-like figure in Islam, was killed in a battle on Sunday near Najaf with hundreds of his followers, Iraq's national security minister said yesterday.

Women and children who had joined 600-700 of his fighters outside the Shiite holy city of Najaf may also be among the casualties, Shirwan al-Waeli told Reuters. All those who were not killed there were in detention, many of them wounded.

The final casualty toll, put by other Iraqi officials at 300 gunmen, was still being calculated, he said, putting the initial figure at about 200 militants. Searchers were still scouring the area where U.S. tanks, helicopters and jets reinforced Iraqi troops during some 24 hours of fighting.

"He claimed to be the Mahdi," Waeli said of the cult's leader, adding that he had used the full name Mahdi bin Ali bin Ali bin Abi Taleb, claiming descent from the Prophet Mohammad. He was believed to be a 40-year-old from the nearby Shiite city of Diwaniya.

The group, which other Iraqi officials said included both Sunni and Shiite Muslims as well as foreigners, had planned an attack yesterday on the Shiite clerical establishment in Najaf. "One of the signs of the coming of the Mahdi was to be the killing of the Ulema (hierarchy) in Najaf," Waeli said.

Waeli said the death toll among Iraqi forces was around 10 soldiers and police. Najaf's police chief was wounded, he said.

Two U.S. soldiers were killed when their attack helicopter came down during the fighting, the military said.

Among previous violent instances of people saying they were the Mahdi were an opposition movement to British imperial forces in Sudan in the 1880s and a group of several hundred, including women, that took over the Grand Mosque in Mecca in 1979.

Meanwhile, a mortar attack struck a Shiite neighborhood in a Sunni-dominated town south of Baghdad yesterday, killing 10 civilians, including women and children and wounding five.Also, three university professors and a student were kidnapped in the Khadimiya district in northern Baghdad, reported Reuters.


The government and the US-led military coalition have been bracing for insurgent violence in the area as a huge flood of Shia pilgrims are arriving in the neighbouring holy city of Karbala to observe the sect's festival of Ashura beginning Monday.


As it happens Daily Summary Weekly Summary Monthly Summary

 

By DPA, [RxPG] Washington, Jan 29 - A major battle between US-backed Iraqi government forces and militants has left at least 250 insurgents dead, an Iraqi military source said.

Colonel Ali Nomas, a spokesperson for government forces in the central Iraqi city of Najaf, said Sunday that over 250 bodies had been counted on the battlefield, at a village about eight kilometres north of the city, US-based Fox News reported.

Another Iraqi Army officer said that government forces captured 10 fighters, one of whom is Sudanese.

The battle occurred when Iraqi security forces reportedly confronted several hundred insurgents, who were gathering outside Najaf with the apparent goal of attacking Shia Muslim clerics in the holy city.

US military air support was called in during the battle. One US attack helicopter was apparently shot down, and the two-member crew killed.

The government and the US-led military coalition have been bracing for insurgent violence in the area as a huge flood of Shia pilgrims are arriving in the neighbouring holy city of Karbala to observe the sect's festival of Ashura beginning Monday.

A force of 25,000 policemen and troops are in Karbala to secure the celebrations amid Iraq's continuing sectarian violence.

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 BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Iraq's army announced Monday it killed the leader of a heavily armed cult of messianic Shiites called "the Soldiers of Heaven" in a fierce gunbattle aimed at foiling a plot to attack leading Shiite clerics and pilgrims in the southern city of Najaf on the holiest day of the Shiite calendar.

Senior Iraqi security officers said that as part of the plot, three gunmen were captured in Najaf after renting a hotel room in front of the office of Iraq's most senior Shiite spiritual leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, with plans to attack it.

The fierce 24-hour battle was ultimately won by Iraqi troops supported by American and British jets and American ground forces, but the ability of a splinter group little known in Iraq to rally hundreds of heavily armed fighters was a reminder of the potential for chaos and havoc emerging seemingly out of nowhere. Members of the group, which included women and children, planned to disguise themselves as pilgrims and kill as many leading clerics as possible, said Major General Othman al-Ghanemi, the Iraqi commander in charge of the Najaf region.

The cult's leader, wearing jeans, a coat and a hat and carrying two pistols, was among those who died in the battle, al-Ghanemi said. Although he went by several aliases, he was identified as Dia Abdul Zahra Kadim, 37, from Hillah, south of Baghdad, according to Abdul-Hussein Abtan, deputy governor of Najaf. Kadim had been detained twice in the past few years, Abtan said.

The American military said Iraqi security forces were sent to the area Sunday after receiving a tip that gunmen were joining pilgrims headed to Najaf for Ashoura, a commemoration of the 7th-century death of Imam Hussein, grandson of the Prophet Muhammad. The major religious festival culminates on Tuesday.

The gunmen had put up tents in fields lined with date palm groves surrounding Najaf, 100 miles south of the capital. They planned to launch their attack Monday night when Ashoura celebrations would be getting under way, the Iraqi security officers told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to disclose the information.

In the battle to foil the attack on the pilgrims, Iraqi and American. forces faced off against more than 200 gunmen with small arms fire, rocket-propelled grenades and hand grenades, the American military said. The battle took place about 12 miles northeast of Najaf.
 

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U.S. military interventions since '50s BAGHDAD, IRAQ — Iraqi soldiers, backed by U.S. helicopters, stormed an encampment of hundreds of insurgents hiding among date palm orchards in southern Iraq in an operation Sunday that set off fierce, daylong gun battles during the holiest week for the country's Shiite Muslims.

Iraqi security officials said the troops killed 250 suspected insurgents while foiling a plot to annihilate the Shiite religious leadership in the revered city of Najaf. A U.S. helicopter crashed during the fighting, killing two soldiers.

The spokesman for Iraqi security forces in Najaf, Col. Ali Nomas Jerao, said that 40 people were detained in the fighting, which took place about eight miles northeast of Najaf. The U.S. military did not provide death tolls for Iraqi forces or insurgents.

Thousands of Shiite pilgrims from Iraq and neighboring countries are traveling this week in drum-beating caravans to the southern city of Karbala, 50 miles south of Najaf, in commemoration of the death of the prophet Muhammad's grandson in the 7th century. Iraqi authorities said they believed that the fighters, a diverse cadre of Sunni, Shiite, Afghan and other foreign gunmen, convened under cover of the pilgrims to set up a camp within striking distance of the Shiite religious leadership when attention was away from Najaf.

The fighters, who called themselves the Soldiers of the Sky, are driven by an apocalyptic vision of clearing the Earth of the depraved in preparation for the second coming of Muhammed al-Mahdi, a Shiite imam who disappeared in the 9th century, according to Ahmed Duaibel, a spokesman for the provincial government in Najaf. The governor of Najaf province, Assad Abu Gilel, said the group planned to attack pilgrims and shrines and to assassinate Shiite clerics at the peak of the religious holiday, called Ashura, which culminates Tuesday.

"Imam Mahdi is among you," a voice on a loudspeaker could be heard by a Washington Post special correspondent who spent the day at a checkpoint near the orchards. "Fight until martyrdom."

"Today's attack was designed to destroy all of Najaf, even the holy shrine of Imam Ali," said Duaibel, referring to one of the most revered Shiite shrines, near the offices of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. If successful, such a provocative attack could surpass in significance the bombing at the Askariya shrine in Samarra last February that drastically escalated sectarian killing in Iraq.

The fighting began overnight when a police checkpoint near Najaf came under fire, leading the Iraqi police to the farms in the Zargaa area where the fighters had dug trenches and stockpiled weapons, said Lt. Rahim al-Fetlawi, a police officer in Najaf. The police who responded found themselves outgunned by the estimated 350 to 400 insurgents entrenched there, said Col. Majid Rashid of the Iraqi army in Najaf.

Reinforcements from the 8th Iraqi Army Division arrived along with U.S. helicopters and ground troops. Iraqi security forces maintain primary control of Najaf province, and U.S. forces do not maintain an established, full-time presence there. U.S. military units based in Baghdad responded to Najaf when the fighting escalated.

"They saw that they needed some help and called in air support," a U.S. military official said on condition of anonymity. "That's exactly what they're supposed to do."

During the operation, a U.S. military helicopter based in Baghdad crashed about 1:30 p.m., killing two soldiers, the military said. The military did not say whether the helicopter was shot down.

A Washington Post special correspondent at the scene saw the helicopter trailing smoke and circling before coming down in a field of sandy dirt.

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Iraqi forces say they killed 250 in battles to foil an attack on Shiites during holy week


By JOSHUA PARTLOW and SAAD SARHAN
Washington Post
TS



America at war
Latest from Iraq
BAGHDAD, Jan. 29 — The gunmen who battled Iraqi and American forces near Najaf on Sunday were members of a Shiite cult that planned to storm the city during a religious festival and kill the nation’s top Shiite clerics, Iraqi officials said today.


The New York Times
American and Iraqi forces battled militants for 15 hours near Najaf.
About 200 members of the group, which called itself “Soldiers From Heaven,” died in the fighting, which lasted until about 4 a.m. today. Iraqi officials said that 60 others were wounded and as many as 120 were captured.

Two American soldiers died in the fighting when their helicopter was shot down, and about 10 Iraqi soldiers and police officers were killed.

Abdul Hussein Abtan, the deputy governor of Najaf province, gave an interview to Iraqi television from the battlefield, saying he was standing next to the dead body of the group’s leader. Mr. Abtan said the dead man had claimed to be the Imam Mahdi — the missing spiritual leader whom many Shiites believe will return someday to restore justice.

“Beside me are a large number of prisoners, hundreds of them,” he said. “There are also hundreds dead.”

Najaf is home to one of Shiite Islam’s holiest shrines, and to its leading clerics, including Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. Security across the country, and in particular in the Shiite-dominated south, had been tightened for the start of the Shiite festival of Ashura over the weekend. The festival, which draws hundreds of thousands of pilgrims to the nearby city of Karbala each year, is marked by processions in Najaf and other Shiite cities.

The governor of the province, Asad Abu Galal, told reporters that the militant group involved in the fighting was led by a man named Ali bin Ali bin Abi Talab. Mr. Galal said that the group’s planned attack “was meant to destroy the Shiite community, kill the grand ayatollahs, destroy the convoys and occupy the holy shrine.”

The exact makeup and motives of the group remained unclear. Mr. Galal described the movement as Shiite in its “exterior,” but not in its “core.”

Mr. Abtan described the movement as “an ideological and military organization with long experience,” and said that its leaders came from outside Iraq. He said it was relatively small, but had rallied a large group of “naïve people” over the past two days by proclaiming the return of the Imam Mahdi.

Mr. Abtan said that two Egyptians had been apprehended in Najaf in connection with the fighting, but the two had escaped, along with a Sudanese and a Lebanese. He said the militant group included Sunnis as well as Shiites.

“They worked under Shiite slogans, but the capabilities they had in the battle are, for sure, not local ones,” he said.

Iraq’s national security minister, Sherwan al-Waeli, told reporters that the group’s followers were told that the killing of the clerics would be a sign that the Imam Mahdi was returning.

“No sane person could believe it,” Mr. Waeli said.

While Iraqi officials stressed today the group’s mixed membership and fringe beliefs, on Sunday two senior Shiite clerics said the gunmen were part of a Shiite splinter group that Saddam Hussein helped build in the 1990’s to compete with followers of the venerated Shiite religious leader Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.

They said the group, calling itself the Mahdawiya, was loyal to Ahmad bin al-Hassan al-Basri, an Iraqi cleric who had a falling out with Muhammad Bakr al-Sadr — father-in-law of the Shiite leader Moktada al-Sadr — in Hawza, a revered Shiite seminary in Najaf.

The clerics spoke on the condition of anonymity because they said they had been ordered not to discuss Shiite divisions.

At today’s news conference, officials emphasized to reporters that the group was very near to beginning its planned attack when it was uncovered by the authorities. “The deadline was very close,” Mr. Galal said.

The fighting around Najaf centered on a date palm orchard near the village of Zarqaa, about 120 miles south of Baghdad. The village is alongside a river and a large grain silo that is surrounded by orchards, the officials said.

The clash appeared to be one of the deadliest battles in Iraq since the American-led invasion four years ago, and it was the first major fight for Iraqi forces in Najaf Province since they took over control of security there from the Americans in December.

At the time, that handover was trumpeted by the Iraqi government as a sign of its progress in regaining more control of Iraqi territory.

Iraqi officials said the militant group, whose numbers were variously estimated at 100 to 600 fighters, was discovered in the orchard Saturday night, prompting a midnight meeting of local authorities.

“We agreed to carry out an operation to take them by surprise,” Mr. Ghalal said.




At dawn, the governor said, the area was surrounded and the offensive began. He said the militants had antiaircraft rockets and long-range sniper rifles, and, according to a soldier involved in the fighting, Iraqi security forces encountered heavy resistance. Commanders called for reinforcements, and a brigade of soldiers from nearby Babil Province joined the fight.

S
Smoke rises from a date palm orchard near the village of Zarqaa, the site of what appeared to be one of the deadliest battles in Iraq in years.

 
Alaa Al-Marjani/AP
Iraqi security forces talked to a wounded man in Zarqa after clashes broke out between Iraqi forces and gunmen there.
Eventually, Iraqi officials said, they called on the United States military for help. American tanks and helicopter gunships arrived, and gun battles continued into the night. By 10:30 p.m., the gunfire had died down, and Iraqi troops began searching the area for bodies.

Elsewhere in the heavily Shiite south, there were other signs of potential attacks timed for the start of Ashura. Officials in Karbala said the police had arrested three men — a Saudi, an Afghan and a Moroccan — who were found on the road between Najaf and Karbala with a suicide-bomb belt and explosives in their car. The officials said the vehicle had been hollowed out so it could be used as a car bomb.

The United States military also announced the deaths of a soldier and a marine on Saturday.

The marine died from combat wounds in Anbar Province, where American troops have been battling Sunni insurgents for months. The soldier, a member of the military police, was killed when a roadside bomb exploded near his patrol north of Baghdad.

Throughout Iraq, the drumbeat of daily violence continued.

In Kirkuk, two car bombs at a Kurdish car dealership and a Kurdish market killed at least 17 people, authorities said.

In Baghdad, 54 bodies were found, many showing signs of torture. At least five girls were killed and 20 wounded when a mortar round hit a school in Adil, a Sunni neighborhood. Fifteen Iraqis were killed and more than 50 were wounded by two car bombs.

At 7:30 a.m., a bomb inside a minibus exploded in a Shiite area of the capital east of the Tigris River, killing one and wounding five. Two hours later, in the Sunni area of Yarmouk in western Baghdad, gunmen killed four people, including a consultant for the Ministry of Industry and his daughter, who were shot on their way to work.

After dark on Sunday night, residents of the Yarmouk neighborhood reported that heavy clashes had broken out, with gun and mortar fire raining down for hours.

Also on Sunday, Saddam Hussein’s cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid acknowledged in court that he had given orders to destroy scores of villages during Iraq’s campaign against the Kurds in the 1980’s.

Prosecutors introduced two dozen documents they said incriminated members of the Saddam Hussein government in the killing of tens of thousands of Kurds.

The Associated Press reported that Mr. Majid, also known as Chemical Ali because he is accused of using chemical weapons against the Kurds, said the area “was full of Iranian agents.”

“We had to isolate these saboteurs,” he said. “I am the one who gave orders to the army to demolish villages and relocate the villagers.”

===============================

BAGHDAD, Iraq | Iraq’s army announced Monday it killed the leader of a heavily armed cult of messianic Shiites called “the Soldiers of Heaven" in a fierce gunbattle aimed at foiling a plot to attack leading Shiite clerics and pilgrims in the southern city of Najaf on the holiest day of the Shiite calendar.

Senior Iraqi security officers said that as part of the plot, three gunmen were captured in Najaf after renting a hotel room in front of the office of Iraq’s most senior Shiite spiritual leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, with plans to attack it.

The fierce 24-hour battle was ultimately won by Iraqi troops supported by U.S. and British jets and American ground forces, but the ability of a splinter group little known in Iraq to rally hundreds of heavily armed fighters was a reminder of the potential for chaos and havoc emerging seemingly out of nowhere. Members of the group, which included women and children, planned to disguise themselves as pilgrims and kill as many leading clerics as possible, said Maj. Gen. Othman al-Ghanemi, the Iraqi commander in charge of the Najaf region.

The cult’s leader, wearing jeans, a coat and a hat and carrying two pistols, was among those who died in the battle, al-Ghanemi said. Although he went by several aliases, he was identified as Dia Abdul Zahra Kadim, 37, from Hillah, south of Baghdad, according to Abdul-Hussein Abtan, deputy governor of Najaf. Kadim had been detained twice in the past few years, Abtan said.

The U.S. military said Iraqi security forces were sent to the area Sunday after receiving a tip that gunmen were joining pilgrims headed to Najaf for Ashoura, a commemoration of the 7th-century death of Imam Hussein, grandson of the Prophet Muhammad. The major religious festival culminates on Tuesday.

The gunmen had put up tents in fields lined with date palm groves surrounding Najaf, 100 miles south of the capital. They planned to launch their attack Monday night when Ashoura celebrations would be getting under way, the Iraqi security officers told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to disclose the information.

In the battle to foil the attack on the pilgrims, Iraqi and U.S. forces faced off against more than 200 gunmen with small arms fire, rocket-propelled grenades and hand grenades, the U.S. military said. The battle took place about 12 miles northeast of Najaf.

The American military said U.S. air power was called in after the Iraqis faced fierce resistance. American ground forces were also deployed after small arms fire downed a U.S. helicopter, killing two soldiers.

U.S. and British jets played a major role in the fighting, dropping 500-pound bombs on the militants’ positions, but President Bush said the battle was an indication that Iraqis were beginning to take control.

“My first reaction on this report from the battlefield is that the Iraqis are beginning to show me something," Bush told National Public Radio on Monday.

The U.S. military said more than 100 gunmen were captured but it did not say how many were killed. Iraqi defense officials, by contrast, said 200 militants were killed, 60 wounded and at least 120 captured.

“It seems most likely that this was Shiite-on-Shiite violence, with millenarian cultists making an attempt to march on Najaf during the chaos of the ritual season of Muharram," Juan Cole, an Islamic scholar at the University of Michigan, said on his Web site. “The dangers of Shiite-on-Shiite violence in Iraq are substantial, as this episode demonstrated."

But Iraqi officials said Sunni extremists and Saddam Hussein loyalists were helping the cult in their bid to ambush Shiite worshippers.

“We have information from our intelligence sources that indicated the leader of this group had links with the former regime elements since 1993," said Ahmed al-Fatlawi said, a member of the Najaf provincial council.

In addition to Iraqi Shiites, the gunmen included Sunnis and foreigners, according to al-Fatlawi. Other Najaf government officials said Afghans, Saudis and even a Sudanese were among the dead.

Al-Ghanemi said the area where the men were staying was once run by Saddam’s al-Quds Army, a military organization the late president established in the 1990s.

Abtan told Iraqi state television that the group had developed a military structure, acquiring the heavy arms and digging trenches in preparation for battle.

“What we want to know is where they bought all these weapons?" al-Ghanemi said, adding that the army seized some 500 automatic rifles in addition to mortars, heavy machine guns and Russian-made Katyusha rockets in what amounted to a major test for Iraq’s new military as it works toward taking over responsibility for security from U.S.-led forces.

Al-Ghanemi said the group -- called the Jund al-Samaa, or Soldiers of Heaven -- is considered heretical by mainstream Shiite clerics and had been planning for months to attack Najaf during the Ashoura ceremonies.

Imam Hussein died in the battle of Karbala in A.D. 680. The battle cemented a schism in Islam between Shiites and Sunnis, a division that has spiraled in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 and in particular since the Feb. 22, 2006 bombing of a Shiite shrine in Samarra.

The Ashoura festival includes processions and ceremonies, including self-flagellation, in a show of grief to mark Hussein’s death in battle.

The planned attack on Najaf was an attempt by the cult to force the return of the “hidden imam," a 9th-century saint who Shiites believe will return to bring peace and justice to the world, according to al-Fatlawi.

The gunmen planned to distribute leaflets in Najaf saying that the hidden imam will appear again, al-Ghanemi said. In the tents outside Najaf, troops found pamphlets titled “Heaven’s Judge," according to the senior Iraqi security officers.

Members had gathered on a farm to prepare to launch their attack, Abtan said. They used date-palm groves as cover, forcing some farmers at gunpoint to help them, said al-Fatlawi. Other officials in Najaf said Saddam loyalists bought the groves six months ago.

Abtan said they planned first to occupy a major mosque in Najaf, then bombard the police stations and kill the religious leaders.

“They intended to occupy Najaf, then topple the Iraqi government and kill all the great religious leaders," he said.

Some of the gunmen brought their families with them in order to make it easier to enter the city, al-Fatlawi said. “The women have been detained," al-Fatlawi said.

Abtan said most of the gunmen who were killed were left on the battlefield and would be taken for burial on Tuesday.

“There were families with them, women and children," he said.

The U.S. military, which turned over provincial control to Iraqi security forces in Najaf last month, touted the operation as a victory for Iraqi forces, singling out their efforts to recover the bodies of two U.S. soldiers killed when their helicopter went down during the fighting.

“This is an example of a promise kept," Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks, deputy commander of the Multi-National Division -- Baghdad and the 1st Cavalry Division, said. “Everything worked just as it should have."

 

 





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The real story of what happened in Najaf
2/1/2007 8:20:00 PM GMT

By: Phillipe Khan

Accounts of the fierce fighting that erupted near Najaf earlier this week aroused many questions and raised fears about Iraqi security forces' performance.

The battle involves Iraqi troops, who, backed by U.S. helicopters and F-16 jets, fought one of the strongest battles since the war broke out in March 2003 in what the Iraqi government said were “militants hideouts” who were allegedly plotting for a massive attack as Shia mourners were converging on the holy Iraqi city of Kerbala to mark the Islamic event of Ashura.

Reports said that Iraqi troops killed 250 "militants".

Colonel Ali Nomas, a spokesman for Iraqi security forces in Najaf, said more than 250 corpses had been found.

The Iraqi government stated that members of a cult called "Soldiers of Heaven" were plotting to assassinate top Shia clerics and had to be stopped. Also Najaf's governor, Abu Kilel, said the group, which he said included both Shias and Sunnis, was plotting to attack Shia pilgrims heading to Kerbala to commemorate Ashura event.

He claimed that the group’s "ideology holds that the Shia establishment are infidel and must be killed. There is a conspiracy to destroy our leading holy men at this time." He also alleged that among the militants killed during the operation were Egyptians, Saudis and Afghans.

On the other hand, The Guardian quoted Colonel Ali Jirio, a spokesman for the Najaf police, as saying that the so-called “Army of Heaven”, led by Sheikh Ahmed Hassani al-Yamami and whose followers believe in the imminent return of the Mahdi, a messiah-like figure, had been established some two years ago near the city of Kufa and faced challenges from Al Mahdi army led by Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who also has a military base in Kufa and considers the group as “heretical”.

An editorial by Dahr Jamail, an independent U.S. reporter and photographer, questions the official story as told by the Iraqi government, backing his argument by independent investigations carried out by Inter Press Service in Iraq.

How did the "Soldiers of Heaven" acquire so many weapons and - if Iraqi accounts are credible- display such military skills? How and why such huge battle broke out in the Iraqi village of Zarqa, which lies a few kilometers northeast of the holy city Najaf?

What witnesses and religious leaders agreed upon was that after the battle ended, over 200 people were found dead, hours after strong fighting took place on Sunday Jan. 28, where scores of Iraqi security force were killed and a U.S. helicopter was shot down, killing two soldiers.

"We were going to conduct the usual ceremonies that we conduct every year when we were attacked by Iraqi soldiers," Jabbar al-Hatami, a leader of the al-Hatami Shia Arab tribe told IPS.

"We thought it was one of the usual mistakes of the Iraqi army killing civilians, so we advanced to explain to the soldiers that they killed five of us for no reason. But we were surprised by more gunfire from the soldiers."

Jamail says that many of the Shia Arabs in Southern Iraq, including members of Al-Hatami and al-Khazaali tribes, reject Iranian- born Cleric Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani and believe that Arab clerics should hold such religious leadership.

Al-Hatami and al-Khazaali leaders believe that the bloody attacks near Najaf were carried out by government-backed troops to fuel the sectarian strife between the Shias and Sunnis in the area.

"Our convoy was close to al-Hatami convoy on the way to Najaf when we heard the massive shooting, and so we ran to help them because our tribe and theirs are bound with a strong alliance," IPS quoted a 45-year-old member of the al-Khazali tribe as saying.

"Our two tribes have a strong belief that Iranians are provoking sectarian war in Iraq which is against the belief of all Muslims, and so we announced an alliance with Sunni brothers against any sectarian violence in the country. That did not make our Iranian-dominated government happy."

IPS also quoted Jassim Abbas, a farmer from the area, as saying that "American helicopters participated in the operation".

"They were soon there to kill those pilgrims without hesitation, but they were never there for helping Iraqis in anything they need. We just watched them getting killed group by group while trapped in those plantations."

Eyewitnesses on the other hand reported that most of the victims were killed by U.S. and British warplanes.

U.S. officials hailed the courage and ferocity of Iraqi soldiers, most of whom are Shias, for confronting Shia "gunmen", with Col. Michael Garrett, commander of the 4th Brigade Combat Team (Airborne), 25th Infantry Division, saying "the aggressive manner in which the Iraqi soldiers performed north of Najaf going after the anti-Iraqi forces was impressive".

Clearly, however, the U.S. and the puppet Iraqi government have failed to get the Iraqis to believe the tale of the battle in Najaf, and the cult which they allege has links to Al Qaeda in Iraq.


 

Pilgrims massacred in the 'battle' of Najaf
By Dahr Jamail and Ali al-Fadhily

NAJAF, Iraq - Iraqi government statements over the killing of hundreds of Shi'ites in an attack on Sunday stand exposed by independent investigations carried out by Inter Press Service (IPS).

Conflicting reports had arisen on how and why a huge battle broke out around the small village of Zarqa, just a few kilometers northeast of the Shi'ite holy city Najaf, which is 90km south of Baghdad.

One thing certain is that when the smoke cleared, more than 200 people lay dead after more than half a day of fighting on Sunday. A US helicopter was shot down, killing two soldiers. Twenty-five members of the Iraqi security forces were also killed.

"We were going to conduct the usual ceremonies that we conduct every year when we were attacked by Iraqi soldiers," Jabbar al-Hatami, a leader of the al-Hatami Shi'ite Arab tribe told IPS.

"We thought it was one of the usual mistakes of the Iraqi army killing civilians, so we advanced to explain to the soldiers that they killed five of us for no reason. But we were surprised by more gunfire from the soldiers."

The confrontation took place on the Shi'ite holiday of Ashura, which commemorates Imam Hussein, grandson of the Prophet Mohammed and the most revered of Shi'ite saints. Emotions run high at this time, and self-flagellation in public is the norm.

Many southern Shi'ite Arabs do not follow Iranian-born cleric Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. They believe the religious leadership should be kept in the hands of Arab clerics. Hatami and al-Khazaali are two major tribes that do not follow Sistani. Tribal members from both believe the attack was launched by the central government of Baghdad to stifle growing Shi'ite-Sunni unity in the area.

"Our convoy was close to the Hatami convoy on the way to Najaf when we heard the massive shooting, and so we ran to help them because our tribe and theirs are bound with a strong alliance," a 45-year-old man who asked to be referred to as Ahmed told IPS.

Ahmed, a member of the Khazaali tribe, said, "Our two tribes have a strong belief that Iranians are provoking sectarian war in Iraq, which is against the belief of all Muslims, and so we announced an alliance with Sunni brothers against any sectarian violence in the country. That did not make our Iranian-dominated government happy."

The fighting took place on the Diwaniya-Najaf road and spread into nearby date-palm plantations after pilgrims sought refuge there.

"American helicopters participated in the slaughter," Jassim Abbas, a farmer from the area, told IPS. "They were soon there to kill those pilgrims without hesitation, but they were never there for helping Iraqis in anything they need. We just watched them getting killed group by group while trapped in those plantations."

Much of the killing was done by US and British warplanes, witnesses said.

Local authorities, including the office of Najaf Governor Asaad Abu Khalil, who is a member of the pro-Iranian Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, had claimed before the killings that a group of primarily foreign Sunni fighters with links to al-Qaeda had planned to disrupt the Ashura festival by attacking Shi'ite pilgrims and senior ayatollahs in Najaf. The city is the principal seat of religious learning for Shi'ites in Iraq.

Officials claimed that Iraqi security forces had obtained intelligence information from two detained men that had led the Iraqi Scorpion commando squad to prepare for an attack. The intelligence claimed obviously had little impact on how events unfolded.

Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani announced to reporters at 9am on Sunday that Najaf was being attacked by al-Qaeda. Immediately after this announcement, the Ministry of National Security (MNS) announced that the dead were members of the Shi'ite splinter extremist group Jund al-Sama (Army of Heaven) who were out to kill senior ayatollahs in Najaf, including Sistani.

Iraqi National Security Adviser Muaffaq al-Rubaii said just 15 minutes after the MNS announcement that hundreds of Arab fighters had been killed, and that many had been arrested. Rubaii claimed there were Saudis, Yemenis, Egyptians and Afghans.

But Khalil's office backed away from its initial claims after the dead turned out to be local Shi'ite Iraqis. Iraqi security officials continue to contradict their own statements. Most officials now say the dead were Shi'ite extremists supported by foreign powers.
The government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has a pattern of announcing it is fighting terrorists, like its backers in Washington. Many Iraqis in the south now accuse Baghdad of calling them terrorists simply because they refuse to collaborate with the Iranian-dominated government.

Ali al-Fadhily is IPS Baghdad correspondent. Dahr Jamail is IPS's specialist writer who has spent eight months reporting from inside Iraq and has been covering the Middle East for several years.