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Shi'ite leader killed in car blast
29/08/2003 14:27 - (SA)
Tehran - Iraq's best-known Shi'ite Muslim politician, Ayatollah Mohammad Baqer al-Hakim, head of the Iran-backed Supreme Assembly of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SAIRI), was killed in Friday's car bomb attack in the central city of Najaf, the group's Tehran office told AFP.
The car bomb explosion killed at least 17 people and wounded scores more outside one of Shi'ite Islam's holiest shrines in the central Iraqi city of Najaf.
The corpses were picked off the ground outside the Tomb of Ali as blood-spattered casualties wandered around the square in panic moments after the blast in the holy city, 180km south of Baghdad.
Hakim, who spent about 20 years in exile in Iran before returning in triumph to Iraq earlier this year, "met a martyr's fate along with his bodyguards," Mohsen Hakim, political adviser to the ayatollah's brother Abdel Aziz, said.
Severals shops were gutted by the blast which struck as the faithful left after afternoon prayers on the main Muslim day of worship.
Smoke filled the area as five charred cars burned. One was thrown at least 100m.
People were buried beneath the rubble of a gate to the compound and two nearby restaurants and shops, which were flattened by the explosion.
Iraqi police supervised rescue efforts as a few US soldiers watched on.
Onlookers shouted: "Allahu Akbar" (God is Greater) every time a body was lifted from the heap of metal and brick.
Outdoor vendors and worshippers had gashes on their faces from flying glass.
An announcement over the mosque's loudspeakers urged residents to go to the local children's hospital to give blood.
The offices of firebrand anti-American cleric, Moqtada Sadr, were also damaged in the blast.
The gates of the mosque were shuttered and guarded by dozens of Iraqi police, while three fire trucks were positioned around the compound.
Police hauled away cars left in the area for fear that more bombs might be hidden.
The car exploded outside the shrine compound's southern gate where Hakim normally enters and exits on Fridays.
An angry crowd outside shouted slogans against fallen dictator Saddam Hussein and the Ba'ath party in the moments after the blast.
Hakim had denounced Saddam and the Ba'ath party during his sermon.
- AFP
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