Iraq braces for Shiite holy day

BAGHDAD, Iraq – Iraqi authorities set up new checkpoints and warned innkeepers Sunday to watch for suspicious people – all part of security measures to protect Shiites marking the holiest day of their calendar this week.

The measures were put in place ahead of the feast of Ashoura to prevent a repeat of suicide bombings by al-Qaida in Iraq that killed at least 230 people during the past two years’ ceremonies.

Iraqiya state television reported Sunday that al-Qaida in Iraq’s fourth-ranking figure, Mohammed Rabei, also known as Abu Dhar, had been arrested by Iraqi police.

The terror organization, led by the Jordan-born Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, has been blamed for kidnappings and beheadings of foreign and Iraqi hostages and suicide attacks against police, soldiers and civilians.

Al-Zarqawi’s group has targeted Shiites because it considers them heretics and collaborators with American forces after the 2003 fall of Saddam Hussein.

Two Shiites were found Sunday bound and shot to death, apparently the latest victims of violence between rival Sunni and Shiite groups. Both were wearing black in apparent preparation for Ashoura, which marks the seventh century death in battle of the revered Shiite saint Imam Hussein, grandson of Islam’s Prophet Muhammad.

Hussein was killed in Karbala in 680 A.D. as part of a power struggle that produced the split between Shiites and Sunni Muslims. Ashoura falls on Thursday this year under the Islamic lunar calendar.

Sunni extremists have targeted the past two Ashoura festivals. Eight suicide bombers killed 55 Shiites last year. In 2004, at least 181 people died in bombings at Shiite shrines in Baghdad and Karbala.

In Karbala, the center of the Ashoura commemorations, police warned innkeepers not to rent rooms to guests without proper identification. About 8,000 troops will be on duty in Karbala, officials said, and extra checkpoints have been set up on highways to protect Shiite pilgrims.

U.S. and Iraqi forces have also stepped up efforts to track down al-Zarqawi. A senior Iraqi security officer, who declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the investigation, said Iraq’s intelligence services had information that al-Zarqawi was spotted a few weeks ago near the border with Iran.

“Intelligence services are working on the assumption that he has been planning to move to Iran after being besieged in the areas where he was operating inside Iraq,” the official said.

Previous reports on al-Zarqawi’s whereabouts have proven false and he could simply be hiding among Sunni communities in Diyala, the volatile province bordering Iran.

Under Saddam, Shiites were suspected of ties to Iran, which fought an eight-year war with Iraq in the 1980s. They were restricted from performing Ashoura rituals such as beating themselves with their hands, chains and the flat edges of swords in shows of grief.

Shiites resumed the rites after Saddam’s ouster, with rituals often turning into frenzied, blood-soaked outpourings of religious devotion.

The Shiites, who comprise about 60 percent of Iraq’s 27 million people, now hold key positions in the government and security services. Most of the insurgents are Sunnis.