19 al-Qaeda arrested for carnage at Holy Shrine

IRAQI police have arrested 19 men - many of them foreigners and all with admitted links to Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda - in the round-up of suspects in the bombing carnage at the Imam Ali shrine in the holy city of Najaf, a senior Iraqi investigator said last night.

The official said two Iraqis and two Saudis were grabbed shortly after the Friday bombing, admitted al-Qaeda ties and gave information leading to the arrest of the 15 others. They include two Kuwaitis and six Palestinians with Jordanian passports. The remainder were Iraqis and Saudis the official said, without giving a breakdown.

"Initial information shows they [the foreigners] entered the country from Kuwait, Syria and Jordan," the official said.

"All those arrested belong to the Wahhabi sect [of Sunni Islam], and they are all connected to al-Qaeda."

Wahhabism is the strict, fundamentalist branch of Sunni Islam from which Osama bin Laden, the al-Qaeda leader, draws spiritual direction. Bin Laden was born in Saudi Arabia, where Wahhabism originated in the 18th century.

US officials have not confirmed any of the details of the arrests, and have not taken an active role in the investigation because of Iraqi sensitivity to any US presence at the holy site.

Hospital officials said 85 people died, including leading Shi’ite Muslim cleric Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim. Earlier counts had put the toll higher, but were reduced after some deaths were found to have been reported twice.

Yesterday crowds gathered at the mosque to demonstrate against those still loyal to Saddam, who they blamed for the attack, but also the US forces for failing to provide adequate security.

"Our leader al-Hakim is gone. We want the blood of the killers of al-Hakim," a crowd of 4,000 men beating their chests chanted in unison in Najaf, 110 miles south-west of Baghdad.

Ammar Abdel Aziz al-Hakim, one of his nephews, addressed the crowd in Najaf yesterday and hit out against the Coalition troops.

"We have told the occupation forces that Iraq is for Iraqis and not for them," he said.

Tens of thousands of worshippers filled the shrine and the surrounding streets for a funeral service for the victims. There was to be a service for al-Hakim in Baghdad early today with the body then taken to Karbala, near Najaf. It was to be buried in Najaf on Tuesday.

In Najaf, the main road leading to the shrine was open only to pedestrians, and residents were seen carrying coffins on the tops of cars and backs of trucks for the funeral service.

The Najaf police official, who led the initial investigation and interrogation of the captives, said the prisoners told of other plots to kill political and religious leaders and to damage vital installations such as power plants, water supplies and oil pipelines. Several more suspects had been arrested yesterday, he said.

The Iraqi police officer said the four suspects first arrested after Friday’s attack claimed the recent bombings were designed to "keep Iraq in a state of chaos so that police and American forces are unable to focus attention" on the country’s borders, allowing foreign fighters to gain easy access to the country.

The bomb used in the attack is thought to have contained 1,550lbs of explosives and several hand grenades planted in two cars.

Early yesterday, a fresh explosion and fire hit the export pipeline carrying oil from Iraq’s northern Kirkuk fields to Turkey. The huge blaze burned out of control, further delaying the resumption of the vital link which is costing Iraqis an estimated $7m a day it is out of operation. The explosion and fire were the fourth to hit the line since it briefly reopened earlier this month.

The Najaf police official said the bomb at the Imam Ali shrine - the burial place of the son-in-law of the Prophet Muhammad - was made from the same type of materials used in the August 19 bombing at the UN headquarters in Baghdad, in which at least 23 people died, and the Jordanian embassy attack on August 7. Nineteen people died in that vehicle bombing.

Yesterday there were demonstrations in the southern city of Basra, where more than 5,000 people came out to show their anger. "The responsibility of Hakim’s death lies with the British and American forces because they neglected security," some of the marchers shouted.

The US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council declared three days of mourning and United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan led calls for restraint among Iraq’s political and religious groups.

Hakim was the leader of an Iranian-backed group, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), which is represented on the Governing Council.

Iran, which was home to Ayatollah Hakim for 20 years after he was forced into exile by Saddam, condemned the bombers but said the US-led occupation forces were ultimately responsible for failing to stop them.

In his last sermon, Hakim denounced Saddam loyalists who he said were "now targeting the Marjiya [the top Shia religious leaders]" and also condemned attacks on American and British troops.

In Baghdad yesterday, a member of SCIRI said the bombing would not deter the organisation from co-operating with the US forces. Ali al-Ghadban, a member of the SCIRI politburo, said: "They [the Americans] are responsible for the incident because of their failure to provide security in Iraq.