Thousands of supporters of Shiite leader Moqtada al-Sadr marched through eastern Baghdad yesterday to mourn the killing of a Sadrist lawmaker and hear a statement from the anti-US cleric blaming occupation and terrorism for the loss.
The crowd walked through the sprawling Shiite slum of Sadr City behind a car carrying the casket of politician Saleh al-Auqaeili.
The body was then taken to the Shiite holy city of Najaf to be buried.
Al-Auqaeili was traveling in a convoy with other Shiite lawmakers on Thursday when a roadside bomb struck it in eastern Baghdad. He died later at a hospital.
As yesterday’s procession reached the al-Sadr movement’s local office, a statement from the cleric was read out mourning al-Auqaeili as a martyr. It called on the Iraqi government to investigate the killing.
“The hand of heinous occupation and terrorism assassinated another martyr of freedom,” said the statement, read out by al-Sadr aide Jalil al-Sarkhi.
It praised al-Auqaeili for dedicating himself to “get the occupier outside Iraq” and refusing to sign a long-term agreement with US-led forces.
The Sadrists oppose negotiations for a security agreement that would extend the presence of US troops in Iraq beyond this year and some of the victims’ allies blamed US and Iraqi forces for Thursday’s blast.
Suspicion also fell on Shiite splinter groups — some with suspected links to Iran, which has sheltered al-Sadr for nearly 18 months — raising fears of new internal Shiite bloodshed ahead of regional elections expected in January.
The convoy of al-Auqaeili, considered a moderate within al-Sadr’s movement, was about 200m from an Iraqi army checkpoint in mostly Shiite eastern Baghdad when the bombing occurred, a colleague said.
One commuter on a motorcycle was also killed in the blast, police said.
Al-Sadr’s followers have long opposed the US military presence in Iraq and some of them cited their opposition to a US-Iraqi security agreement that has been under negotiation for months as a motive for the assassination.
Meanwhile, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki appointed a panel headed by Interior Minister Jawad Bolani to probe the assassination.
“We reaffirm our determination to get at the hotbeds of terrorism and crime and arrest and prosecute the killers and bring them to justice,” the prime minister said in a statement.
The assassination was also strongly condemned by US ambassador Ryan Crocker and General Raymond Odierno, the commander of US forces in Iraq.
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