Radical Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr appeared for Friday prayers at his local mosque in Kufa, central Iraq, five months after United States commanders claimed he had fled to Iran. The young preacher, the leader of one of Iraq’s most powerful armed movements, arrived at the mosque surrounded by an entourage of Shi’ite clerics.
A suicide bomber drove a minibus into a crowded market in Iraq’s Shi’ite city of Kufa on Tuesday, killing 16 people, officials said, in the latest in a spate of sectarian attacks blamed on al-Qaeda Sunni militants. Witnesses said the bomber drove a minibus into an open-air market packed with morning shoppers in central Kufa, near the holy Shi’ite city of Najaf.
A suicide bomber pulled his minivan into a busy market on Tuesday, lured labourers onboard with the promise of jobs and then blew himself up, killing at least 59 people in one the bloodiest attacks in Iraq this year. The blast in the Shi’ite city of Kufa wounded 132 people and sparked clashes between police and angry protesters.
Wanted Shiite Muslim radical leader Moqtada al-Sadr said on Friday a compromise with the United States-led coalition ”will not work” and he was prepared to die as a ”martyr” fighting the occupation forces. ”We will not allow the forces of occupation to enter Najaf and the holy sites,” said al-Sadr in a fiery sermon.
Under the lazy afternoon sun, a dozen men stood guard this week inside the coiled barbed-wire fence that surrounds the police station in Kufa, near the holy city of Najaf. They were well-armed, most carrying Kalashnikovs, one a sniper’s rifle with another two hand grenades tucked into his vest, but not one was a policeman.