The US military has learned from people close to Iraq's most powerful spiritual leader that accounts of an assassination attempt against him on Thursday were "a fabrication," a senior military official said on Friday.
Contradictory reports about a possible attack on the cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali Husseini al-Sistani, in the southern holy city of Najaf continued to circulate throughout the country.
The US official said the military had no further information on how reports of an attack began. Early indications of an attack came from the spokesman for a prominent politician and from security guards for the ayatollah, the reclusive leader of Iraq's 15 million Shiites.
The official added, though, that the US military did not have "eyes on the ground to say definitely what happened."
The politician, Mowaffak al-Rubaie, an independent Shiite member of the Iraqi Governing Council, said on Friday that he could not confirm or deny reports of an assassination attempt. On Thursday night, his spokesman, Ali al-Shapoot, said that there had been an attack on the ayatollah, who is calling for immediate direct elections in Iraq, against the wishes of the administration of US President George W. Bush.
Some security officials for al-Sistani also told news organizations on Thursday night that there had been an attempt on the ayatollah's life. Radio Sawa, a regional station operated by the US government, reported earlier in the day that threats had been made against him, and that the cleric had moved to a safe location. The radio report was possibly the first public mention of a threat of some kind.
Rubaie, a neurologist, said on Friday that "an incident" had taken place on Thursday morning that involved al-Sistani. When Rubaie went to the cleric's small home in Najaf in the afternoon, he said, the ayatollah appeared "fit" and "not shaken."
"There was a heightened sense of security at his house," Rubaie said, adding that a small metal gate had been erected at the entrance to the narrow alleyway leading to the ayatollah's home.
The mouth of the alleyway, just blocks from the golden-domed Shrine of Ali, one of the holiest pilgrimage sites for Shiites, is usually watched by a couple of plainclothes guards. Al-Sistani, 73, rarely leaves his home. He occasionally receives worshipers, politicians and other religious leaders.
When asked how he had learned about the incident, Rubaie said he did not want to answer and abruptly cut off the interview.
There appeared to be some confusion on Friday among al-Sistani's representatives as to what had happened the previous day. Nooraddin Mousawi, the brother of the ayatollah's representative in Baghdad, said on Friday that the Baghdad office could not confirm or deny whether there had been an attack and was awaiting word from Najaf. Later, the office in Najaf released a statement saying that "there was absolutely no truth in these reports."
Hamid al-Kaffaf, the ayatollah's representative in Lebanon, told Al Jazeera, the Arab-language television network, that no one from the ayatollah's office had confirmed the assassination attempt. He said the ayatollah had increased security precautions in the last two weeks because his office had received "confused information" that there might be attacks on him.
He added that the people spreading rumors of the attack were trying to interfere with the imminent visit of a U.N. team expected to assess the feasibility of direct elections for a transitional national assembly. Al-Sistani has called for such elections by June 30.
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