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| Iraq |
| Baqer Al-Hakim Killed In Najaf Blast |
| 2003-08-29 |
| From Islam Online: One of Iraq’s best-known Shiite Muslim politician, Ayatollah Mohammad Baqer al-Hakim, head of the Iran-backed Supreme Assembly of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SAIRI), was killed in Friday’s, August 29, car bomb in the central city of Najaf, according to the group’s Tehran office. Hakim, who spent some 20 years in exile in Iran before returning in triumph to Iraq earlier this year, "met a martyr’s fate along with his bodyguards," Mohsen Hakim, political adviser to the ayatollah’s brother Abdel Aziz, told Agence France-Presse (AFP) in tears. Guess the bodyguards didn’t check their bosses car, or one of them put the bomb there. In one of the most violent days in the occupied country, a car bomb explosion killed at least 20 people and wounded scores more outside one of Shiite Islam’s holiest shrines in the central Iraqi city of Najaf Friday, an AFP correspondent witnessed. Seventeen corpses were picked off the ground outside the Tomb of Ali as blood-spattered casualties wandered around the square in panic moments after the blast in the holy city, 180 kilometers (110 miles) south of Baghdad. Several shops were gutted by the blast which struck as the faithful left after afternoon prayers on the main Muslim day of worship. Smoke filled the area as five charred cars burned. One was thrown at least 100 meters (yards). People were buried beneath the rubble of a gate to the compound and two nearby restaurants and shops, which were flattened by the explosion. Iraqi police supervised rescue efforts as a few U.S. soldiers watched on. Onlookers shouted: "Allahu Akbar" (God is Greater) every time a body was lifted from the heap of metal and brick. Outdoor vendors and worshippers had gashes on their faces from flying glass. An announcement over the mosque’s loudspeakers urged residents to go to the local children’s hospital to donate blood. The offices of firebrand anti-American cleric, Moqtada Sadr, were also damaged in the blast. He’s considered the prime suspect by a lot of folks. The gates of the mosque were shuttered and guarded by dozens of Iraqi police, while three fire trucks were positioned around the compound. Police hauled away cars left in the area for fear that more bombs might be hidden. Minutes before the blast, worshippers were listening to the weekly prayer sermon delivered by Baqer al-Hakim, head of the SAIRI, the country’s main Shiite political party. Earlier, an announcement over the mosque’s loudspeakers said Hakim had survived the blast. The car exploded outside the shrine compound’s southern gate where Hakim normally enters and exits on Fridays. Should have varied his routine. An angry crowd outside shouted slogans against fallen dictator Saddam Hussein and the Baath party in the moments after the blast. Hakim had denounced Saddam and the Baath party during his sermon. Anti-American chants scheduled for a later date. In another violent incident, the deputy security chief for the Kurds in the northeastern Iraqi province of Sulaimaniya has been shot dead by Ansar al-Islam group, an official from the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) told AFP Friday. Yup, they’re back! Sulaimaniya’s deputy security chief, Hama Hussein, was shot dead Wednesday afternoon by four Ansar members, as he approached the house where his forces had them surrounded in the middle of the city, the official said. The militants had agreed to negotiate with Hussein and, as he walked towards the agreed meeting point, he was hit by bullets, the official said. The old shot while under a white flag trick, bastards. In the ensuing battle, three Ansar members were killed and one arrested, the official said. Soon to be shot. And no one else will get a chance to talk after this. Along the porous border with Iran, Ansar, espousing a puritanical vision of Islamic law, ruled a handful of villages for nearly two years and allegedly struck up ties with the al-Qaeda network before being crushed by U.S. special forces at the end of March. Now five months later, Ansar fighters are believed to have slipped back inside Iraq from Iran, across the mountainous border, posing a threat in the minds of the Americans and the PUK, the party of Jalal Talabani which dominates life in the eastern part of Iraqi Kurdistan. Ooops, Islam Onlines bias is showing. The country’s U.S. civilian administrator, Paul Bremer, warned repeatedly that hundreds of the group’s followers have returned to plot "terror attacks" around the country. Kurdish officials have also blamed Iran for allowing the Ansar fighters to return. Well, we never really believed Iran when they said they weren’t sheltering them. |
| Posted by:Steve |