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Mosque car bomb iraq shiite city { August 29 2003 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
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Mosque Car Bomb Brings Mayhem to Iraq Shi'ite City
Fri August 29, 2003 09:08 AM ET
By Rosalind Russell
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A car bomb attack killed up to 20 people on Friday outside the main mosque in Najaf, an Iraqi holy city racked by feuding among Shi'ite Muslim factions. Shi'ite officials said a top Shi'ite leader was among the dead.
"It happened shortly after prayers. It was a car bomb and up to 20 people were killed," Adel Abdul Mahdi, an official of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), told Reuters in Baghdad after receiving reports from Najaf.
He said the bomb exploded as worshippers streamed out of the Imam Ali mosque. A U.S. military spokesman confirmed there had been a bomb. "No coalition forces were in the area or on the ground because it is considered to be sacred ground," he said.
Amid the carnage, accounts by witnesses were confused. The nephew of Ayatollah Mohammed Baqer al-Hakim, the leader of SCIRI, told Reuters in Tehran his uncle had been killed by the car bomb.
The attack is the latest in a series of bloody incidents in Najaf, several of them aimed at religious leaders of the Shi'ite branch of Islam followed by a majority of Iraqis.
On Sunday three men were killed in a bombing that injured Hakim's uncle, also a cleric associated with SCIRI, which has been criticized by some Shi'ites for cooperating with the U.S. occupation. Some SCIRI supporters blamed that bomb on a rival Shi'ite leader strongly opposed to the presence of foreign troops.
SCIRI's representative in London said however Friday's bomb might not be the work of a Shi'ite faction. "It could be either Saddam loyalists using new techniques such as remote control or even suicide bombs, or it could be another extreme group," said Hamid Bayati.
U.S. TROOPS AMBUSHED
Further north, guerrillas ambushed a U.S. military convoy with rocket-propelled grenades on Friday, killing a soldier and wounding three others amid growing calls for a United Nations force to pacify the country.
A U.S. Army spokesman said the six-vehicle convoy was attacked on a main road near the town of Baquba, part of the so- called "Sunni Triangle" north and west of Baghdad which is a bastion of anti-occupation sentiment.
"One soldier died, one has a chest wound and two were hit by shrapnel," Lieutenant Colonel William Adamson told Reuters. "They used rocket-propelled grenades and AK-47s."
The death brings to 65 the number of U.S. soldiers killed in attacks since Washington declared major combat operations over on May 1 following the war which ousted Saddam Hussein.
Guerrilla resistance and major violence such as last week's bombing of the U.N. office in Baghdad have provoked debate on whether Washington and its allies have enough troops on the ground with the right training to stabilize Iraq.
With the Bush administration signaling for the first time it might agree to a U.N.-sponsored multinational force in Iraq, the United States and Britain are expected to explore a new U.N. resolution to encourage nations to send troops.
German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer said in remarks published on Friday that the United Nations should be given a leading role with a clear timetable for the return of sovereignty to the Iraqi people.
"It must be clear that it concerns the liberation and return of Iraqi sovereignty according to an agreed timetable and an agreed course of action," Fischer told Handelsblatt newspaper.
France, which like Germany opposed the U.S.-led war, called on Thursday for a change of policy direction in Iraq, with the United States handing security over to a U.N.-mandated force.
BLAIR'S POPULARITY SLUMPS
In Britain, an opinion poll on Friday showed support for Prime Minister Tony Blair had plunged during the controversy surrounding the suicide of a weapons expert caught up in a row between the BBC and the government over the Iraq war.
Testifying at a judicial inquiry into the death of David Kelly on Thursday, Blair denied aides had hyped intelligence reports to justify invading Iraq.
Just 22 per cent of those polled by the Daily Telegraph said the government had been honest and trustworthy. Only 27 percent trusted Blair personally.
The death of another British soldier in southern Iraq on Thursday brought to 11 the number of British soldiers killed in action since the end of the war.
U.S. troops continued their hunt for Saddam and suspected guerrillas in the Sunni Triangle, from where the ex-dictator, himself a Sunni Muslim, drew much of his support.
Soldiers from the U.S. Army's 4th Infantry Division raided dozens of homes and suspected hideouts overnight, detaining 25 Iraqis, two of whom they described as "significant targeted individuals."
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