Iraqi troops backed by United States helicopters and F-16 jets fought one of the fiercest battles since the end of the 2003 war on Sunday, as they attacked insurgents supposedly plotting to wreak carnage at a Shia commemoration.
Iraqi officials said 250 members of a messianic Islamic group had been killed in a day of fighting during which a US helicopter was shot down, killing two US servicemen. The high death toll could not be verified on Sunday night with the fighting still raging but if confirmed it would represent the highest number of casualties in a single battle since the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq.
Meanwhile in Baghdad at least four mortar shells struck a girls’ secondary school on Sunday, killing five pupils and wounding 20. Witnesses at al-Khaloud school said the shells thudded into the school’s yard at about 11am, when many pupils were gathered for a break. Four girls died instantly and a fifth died later in hospital. ”They were just innocently talking to their friends when there was a whistling sound and then deafening blasts,” said a parent outside the nearby Yarmouk hospital, where his daughter was being treated for severe leg wounds.
A police spokesperson said it was not clear whether the school had been specifically targeted, but it is situated in the mainly Sunni district of Adil in western Baghdad. The area has been the focus of reprisal attacks against Sunni Arabs, following a week of bombs against targets in the east of the city that has killed at least 150 civilians, many Shia. Amid the violence in the capital, and insurgent threats against schools and teachers, school attendance is down by as much as 60% in some areas.
The Najaf battle underscored the challenges facing Iraqi security forces and their US backers. The troop surge is intended to focus on Baghdad and Anbar province, but Sunday’s events proved they are not the only perilous parts of Iraq.
Witnesses near the scene said Iraqi forces had attacked at dawn, hurling everything they could at the group, who responded with automatic weapons, sniper fire and rockets. Najaf’s police chief, who was reportedly wounded in the action, then called in US airpower. At some point the witnesses said they saw a US helicopter with black smoke pouring out of it, plummeting to the ground.
Najaf’s governor, Abu Kilel, said the group, which has Shia and Sunni adherents, was to attack pilgrims and Shia clerics heading for Ashura events which peak on Tuesday with processions in Kerbala. ”Their ideology holds that the Shia establishment are infidel and must be killed. There is a conspiracy to destroy our leading holy men at this time,” Abu Kilel said, adding that non-Iraqis including Egyptians, Saudis and Afghans, were among the dead.
Colonel Ali Nomas, a spokesperson for Iraqi security forces in Najaf, said more than 250 corpses had been found.
Colonel Ali Jirio, a spokesperson for the Najaf police, told the Guardian the group which calls itself Army of Heaven had established itself two years ago in farms near Kufa. But it ran into trouble with the Jaish al-Mehdi militia loyal to Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who has a base in Kufa and who regards the group as heretical. The group is led by Sheikh Ahmed Hassani al-Yamami, and its followers believe in the imminent return of the mehdi, a messiah-like figure whose coming heralds the dawn of a kingdom of peace and justice.”
Jirio said the group had grown to 600 fighters and had ”built defences and shelters which made it hard to oust them.” Sheikh Yamami had been operating from an office in Najaf until it was raided and closed down about 10 days ago by Najaf intelligence forces, who uncovered the plot to target this year’s Ashura events.
Officials in Najaf said the group also contained a number of Sunni militants and ex-Ba’athists who had joined the cult in order to launch attacks on Shia holy places. Across Baghdad on Sunday another seven people were killed by bombs, while blasts in Fallujah and the northern oil city of Kirkuk killed at least 13. – Guardian Unlimited Â