At least 22 people were killed and as many as 200 injured on Sunday in a three-hour gun battle between coalition troops from the United States, Spain and El Salvador and thousands of Iraqi protesters loyal to a firebrand Shia cleric.
Supporters of Moqtada al-Sadr, a stridently anti-American religious leader, were marching on a military base in Kufa, close to Najaf, when shooting broke out.
At least 20 Iraqis were killed. Two coalition soldiers, an American and a Salvadorean, died and nine were injured.
The cleric’s followers seized control of a police station and a hospital in Kufa as sporadic shooting continued around the military base throughout the afternoon.
Thousands more followers of Sadr staged demonstrations in Baghdad, Nassiriya and Basra. Up to five protesters were injured in Baghdad when Iraqi police fired at the crowd, his aides said.
In Kufa, about 160km south of Baghdad, witnesses said the gun battle began when protesters threw stones at a military vehicle arriving at the base. Shortly afterwards Spanish and Salvadorean soldiers and Iraqi police fired into the crowd.
Several members of an unauthorised militia loyal to Sadr, known as the Mehdi Army, fired at the troops and hid in workshops and junkyards near the military base.
Most of the dead wore the black uniforms of the Mehdi Army. American Apache helicopters circled above.
In Madrid, the Spanish defence ministry said Salvadorean and Spanish troops had come under attack and ”returned fire in legitimate self-defence and according to the rule of engagement, dispersing the attackers”.
The latest burst of protests was triggered by a decision by the American authorities last Sunday to close down the cleric’s newspaper, al-Hawza, for alleged incitement to violence. On Saturday, US troops arrested one of Sadr’s top deputies, Sheikh Mustafa al-Yacoubi, in Najaf.
Rather than stifling Sadr’s radical movement, the two incidents appear to have inflamed the problem. Sunday’s shootings are likely to trigger increasingly violent protests from the cleric’s followers.
Last night Sadr (30) said he would stage a sit-in at a Kufa mosque.
”Terrorise your enemy, God will reward you well for what pleases him. It is not possible to remain silent in front of their abuse,” he said in a statement.
Several months ago the young cleric, one of the few Shia leaders who has threatened Americans with violence, was regularly goading the US occupation authorities with protests and threats. He fell quiet after Iraq’s governing council suggested it might arrest him.
His followers are suspected of involvement in the murder of Abdul Majid al-Khoei, a respected moderate cleric who returned to Iraq from Britain immediately after the war only to be stabbed to death in Najaf.
For many months Sadr stayed out of the public eye and built up a large, well-organised and armed following that has support across southern Iraq and in the Shia slum areas of eastern Baghdad.
He relies heavily on the legacy of his father, Ayatollah Mohammad Sadeq al-Sadr, a respected Shia cleric assassinated by Saddam Hussein’s security services in 1999.
In Baghdad, thousands of Sadr’s followers staged a tightly controlled demonstration in Firdous Square. No police were present as Sadr’s guards brought in buses to block one of the city’s main roads and set up a loudspeaker for prayers and speeches. Later, up to five protesters were injured when Iraqi police fired on them as they walked towards the main demonstration.
”The Americans said they came to bring freedom to the Iraqi people and we want to have this freedom to express ourselves,” said Sheikh Amjad al-Saadi, a young cleric gripping a walkie-talkie and leading the protest.
The cleric complained about the arrest of Sheikh Yacoubi, the closure of the newspaper and the fact that troops had briefly surrounded Sadr’s house in Najaf on Saturday.
”The Americans came here to divide the Islamic community. Wherever the Americans go you will find trouble and conflict,” he said.
As he spoke, American soldiers manned a tank behind a barbed wire and concrete fence nearby. The barrel of the tank was trained on the crowd and one soldier filmed the demonstration.
From a military loudspeaker, an Arabic message asked the crowd to disperse. The crowd screamed back in anger: ”Moqtada, Moqtada.”
They roared with approval when Sheikh al-Saadi announced that the southern cities of Basra and Nassiriya had ”fallen into the hands of the Mehdi Army”.
Later, he told the crowd to disperse.
The number of American soldiers killed in Iraq since the start of last year’s war climbed to 600 on Sunday, when two US marines died in attacks west of Baghdad.
American soldiers have returned from Iraq contaminated with radiation probably caused by depleted uranium, according to a report in the New York Daily News.
Four soldiers from the New York national guard ”almost certainly” inhaled radioactive dust from exploded American shells made with depleted uranium while serving in the Iraqi town of Samawa, according to a nuclear medicine expert who examined and tested them.
Several members of the same company returned home feeling constantly sick with headaches, numbness and rashes.
”These are amazing results, especially since these soldiers were military police not exposed to the heat of battle,” Dr Asaf Duracovic told the Daily News.
”Other American soldiers who were in combat must have more depleted uranium exposure.” – Guardian Unlimited Â