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At Least Seven Iraqis Killed in Protest

Posted on: Sunday, 4 April 2004, 06:00 CDT

NAJAF, Iraq - A huge demonstration by followers of a staunchly anti-American Shiite Muslim cleric turned violent Sunday, and at least seven Iraqis, including two soldiers, were killed and 40 people wounded in the clash outside the Spanish military garrison in the holy city of Najaf.

Also, two U.S. Marines were killed in Anbar Province, the enormous stretch of mostly desert land reaching to the Jordanian and Syrian borders west of Baghdad. The province includes the extremely violent city of Fallujah.

Three members of the Iraqi security forces were killed elsewhere.

In Najaf, shooting began after thousands of Muqtada al-Sadr supporters gathered outside the Spanish garrison. Witnesses later reported seeing the bodies of four victims of the violence at al-Zahraa Hospital. Nurse Saad Abdel-Hussein, said at least 30 people were injured, some seriously.

The Iraqi soldiers were inside the Spanish base, according to witnesses.

A spokesman for the Spanish headquarters in nearby Diwaniyah, Commander Carlos Herradon, said attackers opened fire at around noon on the Spanish base in Najaf, and Spanish soldiers fired back. Assailants later regrouped in three clusters outside the base, and gunfire continued into the afternoon, he said.

Herradon said he had no figures on the number of dead and injured.

The crowd was protesting the reported detention of an aide to Muqtada al-Sadr, a Shiite Muslim cleric who opposes the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq.

Some 5,000 people marched to the garrison of the Spanish military contingent in Najaf after hearing that Mustafa al-Yacoubi, a senior al-Sadr aide, had been detained.

Spanish troops in the area have said they had no information on al-Yacoubi's reported detention, and said they did not take part in any such operation.

In central Baghdad's Firdaus Square, hundreds of al-Sadr supporters rallied to protest al-Yaqoubi's reported arrest.

Al-Sadr's office in Baghdad issued a statement later Sunday, calling off street protests and saying the cleric would stage a sit-in at a mosque in the city of Kufa, which is near Najaf, where he has for months been delivering weekly sermons.

About 5,000 members of al-Sadr's self-styled militia, the al-Mahdi Army, paraded in Sadr City, a mainly Shiite district in eastern Baghdad, on Saturday.

Al-Sadr's weekly newspaper was shut by U.S. officials on March 28, prompting an angry response from his supporters.

Two U.S. Marines, both assigned to the 1st Marine Division, were killed as a result of separate "enemy action" in Anbar province on Saturday, the military said in a statement. One died the same day; the other died Sunday. The statement provided no other details.

The most populous city in Anbar, which stretches from Baghdad to the Jordanian border, is Fallujah, where four American civilians were killed and their bodies mutilated Wednesday.

A bomb exploded Sunday near a checkpoint in Samarra, about 100 kilometers (60 miles) north of Baghdad, that was manned by Iraqi Civil Defense Corps personnel, killing three and wounding one, workers at Samarra General Hospital said.

In the city of Baqouba, 30 miles northeast of Baghdad, a bomb exploded Sunday in the al-Rasool al-Adham Shiite mosque, damaging part of the building, but causing no casualties, said the mosque's caretaker Haider Yassin.

In southern Iraq on Sunday, rebels attacked an oil pipeline, rupturing it and setting the oil on fire, said Jamal Khalid, an official with the Southern Oil Company.

Firefighters were battling the blaze and expected to have it out within a few hours, he said. The fire will not affect oil exports, he added.

The pipeline links the southern city of Basra with Faw port, on the Gulf. Rebels have repeatedly attacked oil pipelines in Iraq.

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