14 Iraqis dead after anti-US demonstration
Gunmen opened fire on the Spanish garrison near the holy city of Najaf today during a huge demonstration by followers of an anti-US Shi’ite Muslim cleric. Four Salvadoran soldiers and at least 14 Iraqis died, and more than 130 people were wounded.
Two US Marines died in violence in Anbar province, bringing to 600 the number of Americans killed in the war. Anbar is 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. And in Kirkuk, also in the north, a car bomb exploded, killing three civilians and wounding two others, police said.
Three miles east of Najaf, the shooting broke out after thousands of supporters of the charismatic, young cleric Muqtada al-Sadr gathered outside the Spanish garrison.
A spokesman for the Spanish headquarters in nearby Diwaniyah, Commander Carlos Herradon, said attackers opened fire at about noon.
The Spanish and Salvadoran soldiers fired back, and the attackers later regrouped in three clusters outside the base. Shooting continued into the afternoon, he said.
Along with the four soldiers killed, nine Salvadoran soldiers were wounded, the Spanish defence ministry said in Madrid.
The Salvadorans are under Spanish command as part of an international brigade that includes troops from Central America. No Spaniards were injured.
Spain has 1,300 troops stationed in Iraq, and the Central American contingent is of a similar size.
Multiple train bombings in Madrid last month killed 191 people and have been blamed on al-Qaida linked terrorists who said they were punishing Spain for its alliance with the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Spain’s new government, elected just days after the bombing, has promised to make good on a pre-election promise to withdraw all Spanish troops from Iraq unless command for peacekeeping is turned over to the United Nations.
An official at Najaf General Hospital, Alaa Murtada, said seven bodies were brought to the hospital which also treated at least 90 people.
Witnesses saw four bodies at al-Zahraa Hospital and nurse 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.
The crowd was protesting the detention of an aide to al-Sadr, the 30-year-old cleric opposed to the US-led occupation of Iraq.
Five thousand people marched to the Spanish garrison 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.
At headquarters of the coalition in Baghdad, authorities said al-Yacoubi had been detained.
Spanish-led forces said they did not participate in the arrest.
In central Baghdad’s Firdaus Square, police fired warning shots during a protest by hundreds of al-Sadr supporters against al-Yaqoubi’s arrest. At least two protesters were injured, witnesses said.
Also, residents of Sadr City, a mainly Shi’ite district in eastern Baghdad where support for al-Sadr is strong, stormed several police stations and the local council building, witnesses said.
In Kufa, near Najaf, al-Sadr supporters took over a police station and seized guns inside. No police were in the station at the time.
Al-Sadr’s office in Baghdad issued a statement later Sunday calling off street protests and saying the cleric would stage a sit-in at a mosque in the city of Kufa, where he has delivered fiery weekly sermons for months.
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 yesterday the other died today.
A bomb exploded today near a checkpoint in Samarra, about 60 miles north of Baghdad, that was manned by Iraqi Civil Defence Corps personnel, killing three and wounding one, workers at Samarra General Hospital said.
The MoD said British troops today clashed with demonstrators in the Iraqi town of al-Amara.
There were no immediate reports of any British soldiers being injured in the fighting, although it was thought that there were casualties among the protesters, a MoD spokeswoman said.
She was unable to confirm reports that one person had been killed in the demonstrations.
