Spanish and Iraqi soldiers fought gunmen who opened fire on their garrison during a protest yesterday by supporters of a staunchly anti-American Shiite Muslim cleric in the holy city of Najaf. At least 14 Iraqis, including two soldiers, died and 130 people were injured, hospitals said.
Yesterday afternoon, gunfire was heard in central Baghdad during a protest by supporters of the cleric, Muqtada al-Sadr. It was not immediately known whether there were injuries.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Two US Marines died in violence in Anbar province, an enormous stretch of land reaching to the Jordanian and Syrian borders west of Baghdad that includes Fallujah, a city where four American civilians were slain on Wednesday. North of the capital, a bomb killed three members of the Iraqi security forces.
In Najaf, shooting broke out after thousands of supporters of an anti-American Muslim cleric gathered outside the garrison of the Spanish troops.
An official at Najaf General Hospital, Alaa Murtada, said seven bodies were brought to the hospital. He said the hospital treated at least 90 people.
Witnesses saw four bodies at al-Zahraa Hospital and a nurse there, Saad Abdel-Hussein, said at least 30 people were injured, some seriously.
Three bodies and 10 injured people were brought to Sadr Educational Hospital in Najaf, said doctor Ra'ad al-Hadrawi.
The slain 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 that he had no figures on the number of dead and injured.
The crowd was protesting the reported detention of an aide to al-Sadr, a Shiite Muslim cleric who opposes the US-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 against al-Yaqoubi's reported arrest.
Al-Sadr's office in Baghdad issued a statement later yesterday, 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 US officials on March 28, prompting an angry response from his supporters.
Two US 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 yesterday. The statement provided no other details.
A bomb exploded yesterday near a checkpoint in Samarra, about 100km 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, 50km northeast of Baghdad, a bomb exploded yesterday in the al-Rasool al-Adham Shiite mosque, damaging part of the building, but causing no casualties, said the mosque's caretaker Haider Yassin.
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