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Saddam hunt upped
31/08/2003 16:29 - (SA)
Baghdad - US troops moved into a neighborhood of the northern city of Mosul in force on Sunday amid reports that Saddam Hussein might be hiding there while tens of thousands marched through Baghdad in a funeral procession for slain Ayatollah Mohammad Baqer al-Hakim.
Thousands more members of Iraq's majority Shi'ite community gathered in the holy city of Karbala to the south for a similar procession for the leading Shi'ite cleric and politician.
More arrests were made as police looked for three vehicles reportedly packed with explosives in Najaf, the city where Hakim died in a car bomb massacre on Friday.
Residents of Mosul told an AFP correspondent that US forces backed by helicopters entered the al-Arabi neighbourhood amid reports that Saddam could be hiding out in the area.
"There is a heavy presence of US troops, acting on information that Saddam may be hiding in the al-Arabi neighbourhood," one resident said.
US forces killed the ousted leader's sons, Uday and Qusay, in a raid on a villa in Mosul on July 22. 'Revenge, revenge'
In Baghdad, tens of thousands marched through the streets in a funeral procession for Hakim.
Beating their chests and thrusting their hands in the air, the mourners filed through the winding streets of Kadhimiyah, a middle-class Shi'ite area on the banks of the Tigris River, marching behind a coffin carrying Hakim's remains.
The crowd bayed for vengeance as men brandished black pistols and Kalashnikov rifles, yelling "Revenge, revenge" and vowing to take matters into their own hands, no longer prepared to wait for the Americans to restore order in the country.
Hakim's private militia, the Badr Brigades, reasserted their presence at the funeral for their slain leader who retired the group upon his return to Iraq in May after 23 years of exile.
"The Americans cannot give us security. It is the Iraqis who must do this and the Badr Brigades are Iraqi. This is their right," said Brigade leader Sayed Ali, who tucked a small nine-millimeter handgun in his pants as five of his men wielded Kalashnikov assault rifles and guarded veiled women mourners.
On Monday, Hakim's remains will be transported to the Shi'ite holy city of Karbala for a similar procession, before his corpse is returned to Najaf for burial on Tuesday. Car bombs
Hakim died in Najaf, 180km south of the capital, when two cars exploded outside the sacred mausoleum of Imam Ali, in an attack that left at least 82 others dead and 125 wounded.
In Karbala, thousands more gathered in a square where a statue of Saddam once stood in preparation for a ceremony at a Shi'ite shrine. All roads to the shrine were closed to cars and Iranians, whose country served as Hakim's base for some two decades, were seen arriving for the ceremony. Humanitarian organisation scaling down
The United Nations, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and other humanitarian organisations were planning to seriously reduce the presence of expatriate staff in Iraq following the recent spate of deadly attacks which have fuelled fears that Iraq is spinning out of control.
"A very limited team of a dozen people will remain in Iraq but the rest will start leaving on Monday," a UN official said. Najaf bomb arrest
Iraqi police on Sunday arrested a man on the Saudi border in connection with the Najaf massacre, and said they had now made a total of 19 arrests after the blast, police told AFP.
Two Iraqis with purported links to Saddam and two Saudis suspected of links with the al-Qaeda terror network were being held in Najaf in connection with the attack.
Iraqi police said authorities were also searching for three cars packed with explosives believed to have entered Najaf.
"We received information that three car bombs entered Najaf and we are searching for them," Major Tariq Jamel told AFP.
Also in Najaf, bodyguards of firebrand Shi'ite cleric Moqtada Sadr opened fire on a car at a checkpoint, killing two people and seriously wounding two others, according to hospital sources and relatives of the dead.
A mother and father were taking their daughter and her husband to a medical clinic near Sadr's home when they hit a checkpoint manned by Sadr's men who opened fire when the car sped forward, the sources said.
Meanwhile, an American soldier drowned and two others suffered slight injuries when the vehicle they were travelling in fell into a canal, the army said on Sunday.
The incident happened early on Saturday near Saddam's hometown of Tikrit, about 175km north of Baghdad, a spokesperson said.
- AFP
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