Fighting ignites amid worship
BAGHDAD, Iraq – Iraqi soldiers, backed by U.S. helicopters, stormed an encampment of hundreds of insurgents hiding among date palm orchards in southern Iraq in an operation Sunday that set off fierce, daylong gun battles during the holiest week for the country’s Shiite Muslims.
A U.S. helicopter crashed during the fighting, killing two soldiers.
Meanwhile, in Baghdad, mortar shells killed at least five students and wounded 13 in the courtyard of a girls’ school, drawing condemnation from the U.N.
In the southern fighting, Iraqi security officials said troops killed scores of insurgents while foiling a plot against Shiite religious leadership in the revered city of Najaf.The spokesman for Iraqi security forces in Najaf, Col. Ali Nomas Jerao, said 250 suspected insurgents were killed in the fighting, which took place about eight miles northeast of Najaf, and that 40 were detained. The U.S. military did not provide death tolls for Iraqi forces or insurgents.
Thousands of Shiite pilgrims are traveling this week to Karbala, 50 miles north of Najaf, in commemoration of the death of the prophet Muhammad’s grandson in the 7th century. Iraqi authorities said they believed the fighters, a diverse cadre of Sunni, Shiite, Afghan and other foreign gunmen, convened under cover of the pilgrims to set up camp within striking distance of the Shiite religious leadership when attention was away from Najaf.
The fighters, who called themselves the Soldiers of the Sky, are driven by an apocalyptic vision of clearing the Earth of the depraved in preparation for the second coming of Muhammed al-Mahdi, a Shiite imam who disappeared in the 9th century, according to Ahmed Duaibel, a spokesman for the provincial government in Najaf. The governor of Najaf province, Assad Abu Gilel, said the group planned to attack pilgrims and shrines and to assassinate Shiite clerics at the peak of the religious holiday, called Ashura, which culminates Tuesday.
“Today’s attack was designed to destroy all of Najaf, even the holy shrine of Imam Ali,” said Duaibel, referring to one of the most revered Shiite shrines, near the offices of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. If successful, such a provocative attack could surpass in significance the bombing at the Askariya shrine in Samarra last February that drastically escalated sectarian killing in Iraq.
During the operation, a U.S. military helicopter based in Baghdad crashed about 1:30 p.m., killing two soldiers, the military said. The military did not say if the helicopter was shot down.
A witness saw the helicopter trailing smoke and circling before going down. Maj. Beshari al-Ghazali of the Iraqi army said that the helicopter was shot down and that another U.S. helicopter took fire but did not crash. The mortar attack in Baghdad occurred about 11 a.m. at the Kholoud Secondary School in the Adil neighborhood, police and school officials said. The principal, Fawzyaa Hatrosh Sawadi, said students were mingling in the courtyard during a break in exams when at least two shells exploded.
The blasts shattered windows in classrooms, spraying students with shards of glass.
Hours after the attack, grieving parents wept as the bodies of their children were placed in wooden coffins. Police said four girls died instantly and a fifth later.
In a joint statement, UNICEF and UNESCO called the attack “yet another tragic reminder of the risks facing Iraq’s schoolchildren.”
No group claimed responsibility for the attack, but a Sunni organization, the General Conference of the People of Iraq, blamed Shiite Muslim militias with ties to government security forces. The group said in a statement that the mortar shells bore markings indicating they were manufactured in Iran, which U.S. officials accuse of supporting Shiite militias.
“The people we were fighting were highly capable, well trained and very good at street fighting,” said Capt. Muthanna Ahmed, a spokesman of the neighboring Babil province police force.