"Mosque bombing rocks quest for Iraq stability" (+others)

[Aidoneus]

Mosque bombing rocks quest for Iraq stability
(Reuters)
30 August 2003

BAGHDAD - A car bomb that slew a key US ally from Iraq's Shi'ite
majority and dozens of fellow Muslims at the nation's holiest shrine after Friday prayers leaves no doubt Washington faces an uphill task to create a stable Iraq. Its troops will be on high alert -- if discreetly in the background -- Saturday when Ayatollah Mohammed Baqer al-Hakim is expected to be buried in the holy Shi'ite city of Najaf.

President Bush returns from vacation on Saturday. With his re-election fight just a year away, analysts say he must act quickly to calm fears that Iraq is turning sour.

The third major bombing there this month left a field of potential culprits as wide as the Baghdad attacks on the embassy of Jordan, an Arab friend of the United States, and on the headquarters of the United Nations, to which Washington is increasingly looking to share the burden of postwar occupation.

Some analysts say all three could be the work of anti-US forces out to wreck Bush's efforts to create a friendly Iraq. Friday's blast could also have quite different roots, however.

At least 90 people were killed and about double that number wounded in the explosion at the Imam Ali mosque in the holy city of Najaf, south of the capital. It is the most sacred site for Shi'ites, who form a 60 percent majority of Iraq's population.

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http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticle.asp?xfile=data/focusoniraq/2003/August/focusoniraq_August184.xml§ion=focusoniraq

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2003/08/30
Demonstrations in streets of Najaf

Najaf, Iraq, Aug 30 - Thousands demonstrated in anger Saturday on the streets of Najaf and Basra over the assassination of leading Shiite politician Ayatollah Mohammad Baqer Al-Hakim, who was martyred in a terrorist bombing a day earlier.

Demonstrators gathered in the holy city of Najaf, 180 kilometres (110 miles) south of Baghdad, at the site of the blast outside the shrine of Imam Ali (A.S.), where a vehicle exploded Friday moments after Hakim had delivered a sermon to thousands of faithful.

Ammar Abdel Aziz Al-Hakim, the son of Hakim's brother and governing council member Abdel Aziz, addressed the demonstrators, grieving over the slain cleric killed along with 81 other people.

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"We swear on Hussein (A.S.)to take the revenge of Hakim!" they shouted.

In the southern port of Basra, more than 5,000 people marched from the local office of Hakim's political party, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), to the El-Ebla mosque in the heart of Iraq's second largest city.

"The responsibility of Hakim's death lies with the British and American forces because they neglected security," the marchers shouted.

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http://www.iribnews.com/Full_en.asp?news_id=186966&n=14

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The murder of Ayatollah Mohammed Bakr al-Hakim, the most prominent Shia leader in Iraq, drives another large hole into US claims that security is improving. But it may not have more than a temporary impact on the debate among Shi'ites over their role in post-Saddam Iraq.

His younger brother, Abd al-Aziz al-Hakim, is a member of the US-appointed governing council, which is about to nominate an interim government. He will continue in that position.

Ayatollah Hakim devoted his life to fighting Saddam's regime. He was seen as the spiritual and tactical mastermind behind the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), allowing Abd al-Aziz to assume a more operational role. Now authority in SCIRI will be concentrated in Abd al-Aziz's hands, and the murder may force him to adopt a more radical stance.

The Ayatollah initially refused to let SCIRI join Iraq's new governing council because of long-standing suspicions of US intentions, and his view that any group which endorsed the US invasion would lose credibility.

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1032283,00.html

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Calls for vengeance as Iraq's Shias mourn their dead
Death toll rises over 100 as Iraqi police arrest four men
By Justin Huggler in Baghdad
30 August 2003

Thousands of angry mourners called for vengeance as they gathered outside Iraq's holiest Shiite shrine where yesterday a car bomb killed more than 100 people, including one of country's most senior Shia Muslim clerics.

The bomb also injured more than 140, at the Imam Ali mosque in Najaf as Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim emerged after delivering a sermon calling for Iraqi unity.

"Our leader al-Hakim is gone. We want the blood of al-Hakim," a crowd of 4,000 men beating their chests chanted in unison outside the mosque today.

Tens of thousands of worshippers filled the shrine and the surrounding streets for a funeral service for Ayatollah Hakim and other blast victims later Saturday. The main road leading to the shrine was open only to pedestrians, and residents carried coffins on the tops of cars and backs of trucks for the funeral service.

Iraqi police arrested four men in connection with the bombing, all on whom have connections to Osama bin Laden's al-Qa'ida network, a senior police official told The Associated Press.

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http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=438457

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I wish I had some bogeyman to blame everything on..