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Iraqi security forces clash with Shiite cultCompiled by Daily Star staff Saturday, January 19, 2008
Clashes between a Shiite messianic sect and security forces in two southern Iraqi cities on Friday killed dozens of cult members, policemen and civilians, marring Ashura religious rituals, officials said. The fighting came as hundreds of thousands of Shiites descended on the holy city of Kerbala in central Iraq for Saturday's climax of Ashura.
Members of a Shiite doomsday sect led by Ahmad al-Hassani al-Yamani simultaneously attacked police and troops with machine guns and light arms in the cities of Basra and Nasiriyya at around noon, police said.
The fighting continued throughout the afternoon but became sporadic after dark, reporters in the two cities said.
Iraqi tanks took up positions in the streets of Basra, 550 kilometers south of Baghdad, while in Nasiriyya several thousand troops pushed cult members out of schools, a mosque and a small police post they had occupied.
Basra police chief Major Abdel-Jalil Khalaf said in a statement "dozens" of cult members had been killed and an equal number arrested.
Among those who died in the fierce street fights throughout the oil city was the military commander of the cult, Abu Mustafa al-Ansari, Khalaf said.
The clashes were the biggest test yet for Iraq's Army and police in the south since Britain finished handing back responsibility for security in the region last month. Khalaf did not give a precise number of those killed during several hours of fighting.
In the city of Nasiriyya, 15 people including a police major general and two colonels were killed, officials said. Hospital officials said 82 people had been wounded.
"I was coming back from the market when clashes erupted. I was shot in my leg. There were masked gunmen shooting at police," Abdullah Khalif, 32, said from his hospital bed.
An indefinite curfew was immediately clamped on the city.
Police said those involved in the clashes in Basra and Nasiriyya were members of a cult who believe Imam Mehdi would reappear Friday and they had to take up arms against "infidels."
Mehdi was an eighth-century imam who vanished as a boy and who Shiites believe will return to bring justice to the world.
During Ashura last January, another militant sect dubbing itself the Jund al-Samaa, or "Soldiers of Heaven," clashed with US and Iraqi forces outside Kerbala and the city of Najaf.
Last year's fighting left 263 sect followers dead, including their leader Dhia Abdel-Zahra Kadhim al-Krimawi, also known as Abu Kamar, who believed he was descended from the Prophet Mohammad.
Those clashes near Najaf turned out to be one of the largest battles since the US-led invasion in 2003. A dozen Iraqi security forces were killed while a US attack helicopter was shot down, killing its two crew. The government said at the time the "Soldiers of Heaven" had planned to kill top Shiite clerics.
Little is known about Yamani and his followers except that he claims to be an ambassador rather than a descendant of Imam Mehdi.
A man who said he was from the movement told reporters in Basra that their fighters had decided to attack security forces on Friday because of persecution he said the cult had suffered.
The Ashura rituals commemorate the killing of Imam Hussein by armies of the Sunni caliph Yazid in 680.
Over 2 million people are expected in Kerbala, 110 kilometers south of Baghdad, by Saturday. They will be guarded by a 25,000-strong security force.
After news of the attacks in Basra and Nasiriyya reached Kerbala, pilgrims showed signs of nervousness, affecting the mood in the shrine city.
A suicide bomber blew himself up on Thursday during a procession outside a mosque in Baqouba, 60 kilometers north of Baghdad, killing eight people. - Agencies