MIDDLE EAST

 

Al-Dawa party: "Today war has been launched on Islam."

Posters of prominent Shiite clerics were stained with blood. "How is it possible that any man let alone a Muslim man does this on the day of al-Hussein," said Thaer al-Shimri, a member of the Shiite Al-Dawa party. "Today war has been launched on Islam." In the southern city Najaf, near Karbala, police found and defused a bomb Monday hidden near the shrine of Imam Ali, the most important Shiite saint, Iraqi Police Capt. Imad Hussein said. Three sticks of dynamite with a timer were stuffed inside a water pipe 30 metres from the shrine, he said, adding if it had gone off, the explosion would have injured or killed many. On Aug. 29, a massive car bomb detonated at the Imam Ali shrine as worshippers emerged from Friday prayers, killing more than 85 people, including Shiite leader Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim. In the letter released last month, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, an extremist believed linked to al-Qaida, wrote stepped up attacks were needed to disrupt the planned handover of power to the Iraqis on June 30. Also Tuesday, a landmine exploded in the Abu Nawas neighbourhood of Baghdad, damaging a car used by the Arab television station Al-Jazeera and lightly wounding several staffers. Meanwhile, Japan and France agreed Monday to co-ordinate their aid to Iraq and work together on projects to rebuild the war-shattered country, a Japanese official said. Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and visiting French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin reached a basic understanding on reconstruction assistance to Iraq during a 50-minute meeting Monday afternoon, a Japanese Foreign Ministry official said on condition of anonymity. Japanese news reports earlier this week said the joint projects would have a cultural emphasis and include assisting in the restoration of museums and libraries and creating a database of important manuscripts.

Shiite leaders blame US for deaths
Sayyed Ahmed Saffi: "We put the responsibility on the occupation forces both directly and indirectly,"

Photo: Iraqis rush injured Shi'ite Muslim pilgrims on a cart away from the scene of the blast. Picture / Reuters

Baghdad/Beirut-Three Iraqi Shiite Muslim leaders have blamed the United States and its security policies as the occupying power for the devastating attacks in Karbala and Baghdad that killed at least 182 people. "We put the responsibility on the occupation forces both directly and indirectly," said cleric Sayyed Ahmed Saffi, a spokesman for Iraq's most influential Shiite religious leader Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. "Until now, it is the occupation forces responsibility because they are dealing with the Iraqi police in an unsuitable way," Saffi said, without saying whether Sistani endorsed his comments. "The existence of the occupation encourages such attacks," he added. At least 112 people were killed and 235 wounded in Karbala in a suicide attack backed by mortar fire and bombs detonated at roadsides leading to the Shiite holy city south of Baghdad. In the capital, at least 70 more people were killed and 321 injured when suicide bombers blew themselves up simultaneously at a mosque, while Shiites were commemorating a revered martyr. "We put the responsibility of ensuring security in the country and of protecting sacred Shiite sites on the occupation forces because they have left our borders open to infiltrators," Grand Ayatollah Bashir Najafi said. "In the meanwhile, these forces have spent their time pillaging the riches of Iraq," he added in a statement from the holy city of Najaf, 160km south of Baghdad, warning "the patience of Iraqis is not without limits." "The bad political security of the occupying forces is responsible for this slaughter," said Abdel Aziz al-Hakim, a Shiite member of Iraq's Governing Council and head of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Republic in Iraq. "The occupying forces are incapable of protecting the Iraqis and they don't let the Iraqis protect themselves," Hakim told a news conference in Baghdad, highlighting the loose security along Iraq's borders. At the same time, Hakim appealed to Iraqis to "ensure that the goals of these attackers are not achieved and that there is not discord between the brothers of Iraq."