Cleric wishes hell on bombers

2004-10-01 17:46

Baghdad - A senior Sunni religious figure vented his outrage on Friday against those behind a double suicide bombing the previous day that left scores of children dead in Baghdad.

"Who is responsible for these car bombings, supposedly aimed at the occupation, but which target children, women and elderly Iraqis," asked Sheikh Abdel Ghafur al-Samarrai during Friday prayers at the Umm al-Qura mosque in Baghdad.

"May he who wants to kill to express his hatred for somebody and kills dozens of Iraqis claiming to be a martyr, go to hell," the cleric, a member of the influential Committee of Muslim Scholars, the main Sunni authority in Iraq.

He was preaching a day after a car bombing at a ribbon-cutting ceremony in the Iraqi capital that killed 34 children and eight adults.

Fatwa

As the nation mourned the dead, the group of suspected al-Qaeda operative Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi claimed responsibility for the suicide bombings in Iraq on a website.

But Samarrai asked: "Why target the police or any other Iraqis? By what fatwa (religious edict) are such acts justified?

"Who would write such fatwas for suicide bombers who claim to be liberating the country?" he went on, adding that: "Such acts are against the population and not the occupation."

Samarra operation denounced

Another member of the committee, Sheikh Ahmed Hassan al-Taha al-Samarrai, denounced a new operation by the US-led military and Iraqi forces against insurgents holed up in the restive city of Samarra, north of Baghdad.

During a prayer session at the Abu Hanifa mosque in Baghdad he estimated that the largely Sunni inhabitants of Samarra did nothing "other than deny foreign forces entry to their city."

At least 90 people were killed and 180 wounded as thousands of troops thrust into Samarra before dawn on Friday, in the first major push to reclaim the country's troublespots in the run-up to the January elections.

- AFP