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NAJAF, Iraq (AP) - A senior Shiite cleric called Friday for peaceful resistance to the U.S. occupation of Iraq and warned his followers were running out of patience. In Baghdad, gunmen attacked worshippers after prayers at a Sunni mosque, wounding three people. Imam Sadreddine al-Qobanji spoke to more than 15,000 people who jammed the Imam Ali mosque, Iraq's holiest Shiite Muslim shrine. He said last week's bombing outside the mosque - which killed Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim and dozens of other people - was aimed at sowing discord in Iraq. "Once we find that this road (peaceful resistance) has come...

<p>The killing Friday of Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim in the holy city of Najaf further complicates the race for power in post-Saddam Iraq, riven by religious turmoil and wide discontent with the U.S.-led occupation.</p> <p>Al-Hakim, 64, was killed in the car bombing of Imam Ali mosque, Shiite Islam's holiest shrine in Iraq. He had returned to his native country May 10 after more than two decades in exile in neighboring Iran.</p>

As Ayatollah Mohammad Baqer al-Hakim, the 63 years old leader of the Supreme Assembly of the Islamic Revolution of Iraq (SAIRI) is preparing to leave for his hometown of Najaf, a double conflict is surfacing, pitting senior Iraqi and Iranian Shi’ite leaders and their respective rival religious circles (hawzeh) of Qom in Iran and Najaf in Iraq against each other. Hundreds of Iraqi clerics who had escaped to Iran the inferno Saddam Hoseyn has created for the Shi’as have already left the Iranian religious of Qom, where they were teaching and learning, for their native Iraq, most of them assuring...

QUM, Iran, April 26 — A black-turbaned Iraqi cleric, his belongings packed in a small blue bag sitting at his feet, led about 50 clerics in prayer. Kneeling on red Persian rugs, the men, many of whom who had spent the last two decades in Iran, gathered to catch the train that would take them to Iraq. "I am going first to Kazemein for a pilgrimage and then will go to Baghdad to find a home for my family," said Muhammad Hassani, a 52-year-old mid-ranking cleric, who had lived in Iran since 1980. Mr. Hassani, the father of 10, had...

A massive pilgrimage to this Shiite Muslim holy city this week ended unexpectedly in peace and with signs of moderation toward US forces they credited for ousting Saddam Hussein, who had severely restricted the ritual in past years. Despite repeated calls from religious leaders to show hostility to occupation forces, anti-US demonstrations staged on Tuesday and Wednesday drew only a few thousand, a tiny fraction of the pilgrims. Hundreds of thousands joined the ceremony of mourning imam Hussein, the Shiites' top martyr, in and around his mausoleum in Karbala, 80 kilometres southwest of Baghdad, paying little or no attention to...

WASHINGTON, April 20 (AFP) - US intelligence officials have tracked around 12 Iranian agents moving from Tehran to Al Kut in southeastern Iraq over the past month, according to latest edition of Newsweek out Monday. "We are absolutely 100 percent positive that there are Iranian operatives in town," a senior US military intelligence official told Newsweek, adding that several of them were known members of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard. US officials believe that the Iranians in Al Kut, 160 kilometersmiles) southeast of Baghdad are primarily intelligence officers gathering information and possibly spreading propaganda. There are concerned though that Iran appears...

Armed men continued to besiege the home of Shia spiritual leader Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani on Sunday giving him until Monday to leave the country or face attack, aides to the cleric claimed. The stand-off is a worrying sign of volatility and religious strife among Iraq’s majority community and raises concerns of national unity in post-war Iraq. Tensions are rising among Najaf's Shia community Kuwait-based Ayatollah Abul Qasim Dibaji accused Jimaat-E-Sadr-Thani, led by Moqdada Sadr, of trying to take control of the holy sites of Iraq. “Armed thugs and hooligans have had the house of Ayatollah Sistani under siege since...

USWAR/Najaf bracing for uprising against Saddam regime: sources Tehran, March 22, IRNA -- The holy city of Najaf in southern Iraq, which has a major Shiite population, is bracing for an uprising against the regime of Saddam Hussein, sources close to the Supreme Assembly of the Islamic Revolution of Iraq (SAIRI) said Saturday. "People in the city clashed with forces of the Saddam regime in various districts on Saturday and destroyed pictures and statues of Saddam,"SAIRIsaid. A state of anticipation and revolt is prevailing in Najaf and other provinces in central Iraq, it said, adding anti-Saddam leaflets had been distributed...

DARBANDIKHAN, Iraq - Hundreds of fighters from Iraq's main Shiite Muslim opposition faction put on a rare show of military force at their northern Iraqi base Saturday, with their leadership vowing they would act independently of the United States in the battle against Saddam Hussein. During a rare public parade by the Al-Badr Brigade, the armed wing of the Iran-based Supreme Assembly of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SAIRI), the group's number two said his well-disciplined army would quickly move to secure areas captured from the Iraqi regime in the hours following a US assault. "We will do it our...