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| Iraq |
| Iraqis out in force for al-Hakim's burial |
| 2009-08-30 |
| [Al Arabiya Latest] Thousands of Iraqis took to the streets of Najaf on Saturday for the funeral of powerful Shiite politician Abdel Aziz al-Hakim, as his body arrived for burial in the southern shrine city. Hakim's coffin, draped in an Iraqi flag, was earlier paraded in the nearby holy Shiite city of Karbala, where crowds also gathered ahead of a funeral ceremony. Meanwhile Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki arrived in Baghdad to offer his condolences on the death of Hakim as well as recent truck bomb attacks in the capital that killed nearly 100 people. Hakim, 60, who died in a Tehran hospital on Wednesday after a 28-month battle against lung cancer, was hailed as "leader of the fight" against the tyrannical reign of ousted dictator Saddam Hussein, when his body arrived home on Friday. Iraqi leaders and other officials gathered at Baghdad airport to receive his body from Iran. Some sobbed audibly, and flowers were thrown on Hakim's coffin as it was carried off the plane. A sea of people, some waving black banners, walked alongside Hakim's hearse towards a revered Shiite mosque in Baghdad. The former head of the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council (SIIC), Iraq's largest Shiite political party, was one of the principal leaders in exile of the opposition to Saddam, who waged a devastating 1980-88 war against Iran. In 1982, Hakim helped to establish an opposition movement in Iran against Saddam's Sunni-dominated regime and only returned to Iraq following the U.S.-led invasion of 2003. A scion of one of the traditional leading families among Iraq's Shiite majority, Hakim took over the leadership of his party in August 2003 after his brother Ayatollah Mohammed Baqr al-Hakim was assassinated in Najaf. |
| Posted by:Fred |