Baghdad, Iraq – Iraq’s army announced Monday that it killed the leader of a heavily armed cult of messianic Shiites called “the Soldiers of Heaven” in a fierce gun battle aimed at foiling a plot to attack leading Shiite clerics and pilgrims in the southern city of Najaf on the holiest day of the Shiite calendar.
Senior Iraqi security officers said that three gunmen were captured in Najaf after renting a hotel room in front of the office of Iraq’s most senior Shiite spiritual leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, with plans to attack it. The planned attack was part of the plot.
The fierce 24-hour battle was ultimately won by Iraqi troops supported by U.S. and British jets and American ground forces, but the ability of a splinter group little known in Iraq to rally hundreds of heavily armed fighters was a reminder of the potential for chaos emerging seemingly out of nowhere.
Members of the group, which included women and children, planned to disguise themselves as pilgrims and kill as many leading clerics as possible, said Maj. Gen. Othman al-Ghanemi, the Iraqi commander in charge of the Najaf region.
The cult’s leader, wearing jeans, a coat and a hat and carrying two pistols, was among those who died in the battle, al-Ghanemi said. Although he went by several aliases, he was identified as Dia Abdul Zahra Kadim, 37, from Hillah, south of Baghdad, according to Abdul-Hussein Abtan, deputy governor of Najaf. Kadim had been detained twice in the past few years, Abtan said.
The U.S. military said Iraqi security forces were sent to the area Sunday after receiving a tip that gunmen were joining pilgrims headed to Najaf for Ashoura, a commemoration of the seventh-century death of Imam Hussein, grandson of the Prophet Muhammad. The major religious festival culminates today.
The American military said U.S. air power was called in after the Iraqis faced fierce resistance. American ground forces were also deployed after small-arms fire downed a U.S. helicopter, killing two soldiers.
U.S. and British jets played a major role in the fighting, dropping 500-pound bombs on the militants’ positions, but President Bush said the battle was an indication that Iraqis were beginning to take control.
“My first reaction on this report from the battlefield is that the Iraqis are beginning to show me something,” Bush told National Public Radio Monday.
The U.S. military said more than 100 gunmen were captured, but it did not say how many were killed. Iraqi defense officials, by contrast, said 200 militants were killed, 60 wounded and at least 120 captured.
Iraqi officials said Sunni extremists and Saddam Hussein loyalists were helping the cult in its bid to ambush Shiite worshipers.
