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Najaf-Clashes Clashes erupt between Sadr's militiamen, police forces in Najaf Najaf, May 4, (VOI)- Armed clashes broke out on Friday between elements of Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi army and police forces in Najaf after an official from Sadr's office was denied entry to the old part of Najaf, eyewitnesses said. The clashes, erupted this afternoon, witnessed the use of light-arms at (al-Eshreen revolution) gate of the old city, an eyewitness told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI). Another eyewitness said "the clashes erupted after police forces prevented the official spokesman for Sadr's office Sheikh Salah al-Ubeidi's car...

NAJAF, IRAQ — Persian script laces and flows across the walls of Najaf's seminaries. Shiite Muslim religious scholars in the ancient city's turquoise-tiled edifices bury their noses in Koranic texts illustrated with Persian calligraphy, in scenes that evoke Mesopotamia's rich history. For centuries, Najaf has been a key shrine city ... But for centuries, Iraq's Ottoman and Arab rulers rarely considered Najaf part of their own history. It was always considered a troublesome outpost of the enemy: Iran. ... The reading of the Koran in this country differs from the rest of the Muslim world: The rhythm and cadence of...

WASHINGTON, March 22, 2007 – A garment factory in Najaf, Iraq, will start supplying clothes to U.S. and international retailers in a few months, a senior U.S. official said in Baghdad yesterday. The Najaf facility is “one of the most state-of-the-art clothing factories I’ve seen,” Paul A. Brinkley, deputy undersecretary of defense for business transformation, told reporters at a Baghdad news conference. “It will be providing garments to American and international retail beginning this summer.” The Najaf factory is but one of several economic success stories occurring across Iraq today, said Brinkley, who has been busy showing off the...

BAGHDAD, Iraq - A suicide car bomber struck a police checkpoint Wednesday in the Shiite holy city of Najaf, killing at 13 people in the spiritual heartland of the militia factions led by radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. U.S. forces, meanwhile, investigated the "hard landing" of a Black Hawk helicopter north of Baghdad. Military spokesman Maj. Gen. William Caldwell said the airmen were picked up by rescuers, but gave no further details. At least seven U.S. helicopters have crashed or been forced down by hostile fire in the past month, killing 28 troops and civilians. Meanwhile, Britain outlined its plan to...

Excerpt - BAGHDAD, Feb 14 (Reuters) - Radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr is still in Iraq and has not left for Iran, several of his aides said on Wednesday, after American officials suggested he may have departed to avoid an offensive against militants. The conflicting reports over the anti-American cleric's whereabouts came after Iraq said on Tuesday it would close its borders with Iran and Syria and lengthen a night curfew in Baghdad to try to curb unrelenting violence in the capital. Four Sadr aides said he was still in Iraq, with some saying he was in the holy Shi'ite...

KARBALA, Iraq (AFP) - Four members of a Shiite messianic cult which fought a fierce battle with security forces earlier this week were arrested in the central Iraqi shrine city of Karbala. Karbala police chief Major General Mohammed Abu al-Walid said 25 militants were arrested across the city in a series of raids. Four of those detained were from the "Soldiers of Heaven" group, the militant Shiite cult. At least 263 of the cult's fighters were killed and 502 arrested during fierce clashes with Iraqi forces near Najaf on Sunday. The leader of the militia, who claimed to be a...

Iraq's army announced Monday it killed the leader of a heavily armed cult of messianic Shiites called "the Soldiers of Heaven" in a fierce gunbattle aimed at foiling a plot to attack leading Shiite clerics and pilgrims in the southern city of Najaf on the holiest day of the Shiite calendar Senior Iraqi security officers said that as part of the plot, three gunmen were captured in Najaf after renting a hotel room in front of the office of Iraq's most senior Shiite spiritual leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, with plans to attack it. The fierce 24-hour battle was ultimately...

BAGHDAD, Jan 30 (Reuters) - A Shi'ite Muslim messianic cult, whose leader was reported to have been involved in fighting with U.S. and Iraqi troops, said on Tuesday it played no part in the battle in which about 260 people were killed. Followers of Imam Ahmed al-Hassan al-Yamani, who styles himself the messenger or envoy of the Mahdi, a messiah-like figure in Islam, said theirs was a peaceful movement not linked to the "Soldiers of Heaven" who fought the day-long battle near the holy city of Najaf on Sunday. Conflicting accounts from Iraqi political and security sources have thickened the...

Iraq: total curfew on the Holy City of Najaf of fear of an attack NAJAF (Iraq) - a total curfew was imposed and until new order on the area of Najaf, by fear of an attack of armed groups, four days after violent one engagements between a militia Shiite and Iraqi and American forces, announced Friday the local authorities. “Fire, imposed in the night of Thursday on Friday covers It, was prolonged and it touches all the area of Najaf without exception including Koufa, in the North-East of the Holy City”, affirmed the police force of this city located...

In today's Independent, Patrick Cockburn writes: There are growing suspicions in Iraq that the official story of the battle outside Najaf between a messianic Iraqi cult and the Iraqi security forces supported by the US, in which 263 people were killed and 210 wounded, is a fabrication. The heavy casualties may be evidence of an unpremeditated massacre. A picture is beginning to emerge of a clash between an Iraqi Shia tribe on a pilgrimage to Najaf and an Iraqi army checkpoint that led the US to intervene with devastating effect. The involvement of Ahmed al-Hassani (also known as Abu Kamar),...

At least 45 people have been killed and a further 150 wounded following two bomb blasts in the town of Hilla, 120km south of the Iraqi capital, Baghdad. It is understood two suicide bombers detonated devices almost simultaneously in a market in the centre of the town. Earlier, a man strapped with explosives blew himself up on a minibus in the religiously mixed Baghdad district of Karrada. Shortly afterwards, a car bomb in Rusafi, one of Baghdad's biggest shopping districts, left three people dead and seven injured.

More details have emerged about the shadowy cult whose followers fought Iraqi and US forces in a day-long battle in southern Iraq on Sunday. Iraqi officials say 200 members of the group - which calls itself the Soldiers of Heaven - were killed in fierce fighting near the Shia holy city of Najaf. A well-armed group, a charismatic leader and an audacious plot to attack a holy city and kill its religious leaders. If a novelist had invented the story of the Soldiers of Heaven, it might have been dismissed as a dark fantasy. But an account of the bizarre...

BAGHDAD, Jan. 30 -- A series of separate bomb and gun attacks killed dozens of Shiite worshippers in Iraq on Tuesday, a day after Iraqi and U.S. forces disrupted what they said was a major plot to target Shiite pilgrims and leaders as they mark the high point of their religious calendar.None of the attacks occurred in the city of Karbala, the scene of annual Ashura celebrations that draw hundreds of thousands of Shiite worshippers to the country. But in other towns, outside the focus of heightened security, worshippers were targeted as they commemorated the death 1,400 years ago of...

WASHINGTON, Jan. 30, 2007 – Early reports that credit Iraqi troops for taking the initiative during a Jan. 28 battle with insurgents near Najaf are heartening news, President Bush said during an interview with National Public Radio here yesterday. Bush also told NPR’s Juan Williams that the Iranian government shouldn’t be taking military actions in Iraq that endanger the lives of U.S. servicemembers deployed there. The Najaf battle “is an indication of what is taking place, and that is the Iraqis are beginning to take the lead,” Bush said. The fight involved Iraqi soldiers with U.S. military support engaging...

An intelligence source provides preliminary information on the players behind the Najaf battle; al-Qaeda's Omar Brigade appears to have player a role The motivation and prime actors behind the fighting in Najaf remains uncertain one day after the battle ended. As U.S. and Iraq intelligence attempts to sort out the details, media reports indicate a mix of Shi'ite and Sunni fighters were involved in the battle against Iraqi forces, which resulted in upwards of 300 enemy killed in 24 hours of combat. As we noted earlier this morning, it appears both a Shi'ite 'end-times cult' and al_Qaeda in Iraq's Omar...

U.S. and Iraqi forces killed some 300 gunmen from an apocalyptic Muslim cult in a day-long battle involving U.S. tanks and aircraft near the Shi'ite holy city of Najaf, Iraqi police, army and political sources said. The U.S. military said on Monday it was an ongoing operation so it could not provide any details. An Iraqi army source said U.S. forces took control of the operation on Sunday and had continued bombing the area until well after dawn on Monday. Two Americans were killed, the U.S. military said on Sunday, when an attack helicopter went down during the battle that...

NAJAF, Iraq (Reuters) - The leader of an Iraqi cult who claimed to be the Mahdi, a messiah-like figure in Islam, was killed in a battle on Sunday near Najaf with hundreds of his followers, Iraq's national security minister said on Monday. Women and children who joined 600-700 of his "Soldiers of Heaven" on the outskirts of the Shi'ite holy city may be among the casualties, Shirwan al-Waeli told Reuters. All those people not killed were in detention, many of them wounded. Authorities were on alert on Monday as hundreds of thousands of Shi'ite Muslims massed in the area to...

"Yesterday's fighting at Waterloo was extraordinary, highlighting the daunting challenge faced by the coalition of British and Prussian forces in fighting Napoleon."That's how the Boston Globe might have spun the Battle of Waterloo, judging by the negative gloss the New York Times' Beantown subsidiary managed to put in its article on the major success of Iraqi-US coalition forces at Najaf yesterday. Coalition forces killed an estimated 250 insurgents who were planning to attack Shias, possibly including their supreme religious leader, the Ayatollah Sistani, who had gathered in the city south of Baghdad for a major religious holiday. What made...

BAGHDAD, Jan. 28 — Iraqi forces backed by American helicopters and tanks battled hundreds of gunmen hiding in a date palm orchard near the southern city of Najaf on Sunday, exchanging fire for 15 hours in what appeared to be one of deadliest battles in years, Iraqi officials said. An American helicopter was shot down and 250 bodies were found where the clashes occurred near the village of Zarqaa, about 120 miles south of Baghdad, by a river and a large grain silo that is surrounded by orchards, the Iraqi officials said. Col. Ali Numaas, a spokesman for the Iraqi...

NAJAF, Iraq (Reuters) - Iraqi security forces were fighting a group of Sunni insurgents holed up in orchards in the Shi'ite holy city of Najaf on Sunday, the provincial governor said, and a witness reported seeing a helicopter come down. A Reuters reporter at an army checkpoint about 1.5 km (one mile) from the fighting said he heard a burst of machinegun fire and saw smoke coming from a U.S. attack helicopter circling above the battle. He said the helicopter, which had been rocketing the militants, came down and smoke was rising from the site. It was not immediately clear...