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A leading Iraqi cleric and a member of President Saddam Hussein's
Ministry of Religion were hacked to death by a crowd at a mosque, at
Najaf, in southern Iraq today.
The killings occurred at the shrine of Imam Ali, one of the
holiest sites of Shiite Islam, practised by the majority of Iraqis.
Witnesses told reporters that a meeting was held at the mosque by
leading mullahs about how to control the shrine, which has been
under the control of Haider al Kadar, a member of President Saddam
Hussein's Ministry of Religion.
In a gesture of reconciliation, Mr Kadar was accompanied to the
shrine by Abdul Majid al Khoei a high–ranking Shiite cleric and
son of a prominent ayatollah who was executed by Saddam.
When the two men appeared at the shrine, members of another
faction loyal to a different mullah, Mohammed Braga al Saddar,
verbally assailed them, witnesses said.
Mr Khoei pulled a gun and fired one or two shots. Conflicting
eyewitness accounts had him firing bullets into the air and into the
crowd.
Both men were then rushed by the crowd and hacked to death with
swords and knives, witnesses said. An unknown number of people were
injured."Al Kadar was an animal," said Adil Adnan al–Moussawi,
aged 25, who witnessed the confrontation.
"The people were shouting they hate him, he should not be
here."
Mr Khoei is among the most prominent of Iraq's returned exiles.
His father was the revered Shiite cleric Ayatollah Abul–Qassim
al–Khoi, who was the religion's spiritual leader during a Shiite
uprising against Saddam in 1991.
Following the uprising, the son defected to London, where he
headed a philanthropic group. He returned to Iraq earlier this month
and with other former exiles had been trying to restore order in
Najaf, the third–holiest city for the world's nearly 120 million
Shiites behind Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia.
The mosque holds the tomb of the Shiites' most beloved saint,
Imam Ali Ibn Abu Talib, the Prophet Muhammad's cousin and
son–in–law.
With its silver–covered tomb, ceramic–ornamented walls and
resplendent golden dome and minarets, the shrine is considered a
treasure of Islamic art.
Najaf, whose name in Arabic means "a high land," is
about100 miles south of Baghdad on a high desert plateau overlooking
the world's largest cemetery, where Shiites aspire to bury their
dead.
It is also the seat of the Shiites' spiritual leaders, known as
ayatollahs, and the center for scientific, literary and theological
studies for the Islamic world.
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