Murder cult a grim new twist for Iraq

Women and children who joined between 600 and 700 of his Jund al-Samaa, or "Soldiers of Heaven", on the outskirts of the Shiite holy city may be among the casualties, Shirwan al-Waeli, the national security minister, said. All those people not killed were detained by authorities. Many of them were wounded.

Iraqi troops, backed by United States forces confronted the group after learning it was planning an attack on the Shiite clerical establishment in Najaf today. "One of the signs of the coming of the Mahdi was to be the killing of the Ulema [hierarchy] in Najaf," Mr Waeli said. "This was a perverse claim. No sane person could believe it."

Authorities have been on alert for days as hundreds of thousands of Shiite Muslims massed in the area to attend Ashura, the highpoint of their religious calendar, amid fears of attacks by Sunni Arab insurgents linked to al-Qaeda.

Ashura commemorates the seventh-century death of Imam Hussein, a grandson of the Prophet Muhammad.

But Sunday's battle involved a group of a different sort, a cult which Iraqi officials said included both Sunni and Shiite Muslims, as well as foreigners.

"He claimed to be the Mahdi," Mr Waeli said of the cult's leader, adding that he had claimed descent from the Prophet Muhammad.

He was believed to be a 40-year-old from the nearby Shiite city of Diwaniya. "He was killed," Mr Waeli confirmed. Sources said the self-proclaimed prophet was wearing a hat, coat, jeans and carrying two pistols when he died.

Major General Othman al-Ghanemi, the commander of the Iraqi army's 8th Division that is in charge of Najaf, said between 600 and 700 gunmen had planned to disguise themselves as pilgrims and attack Najaf today.

The final death toll, estimated by other Iraqi officials at 300 gunmen, was still being calculated, Mr Waeli said. Searchers were still scouring the area where US tanks, helicopters and jets reinforced Iraqi troops during some 24 hours of fighting.

Though Sunnis and Shiites are engaged in an embryonic sectarian civil war in Iraq, there have been instances in Islamic history where groups drawn from both communities have challenged the authority of the existing clerical leadership.

The United States military declined to provide details. It officially handed over responsibility for Najaf province, in southern Iraq, to Iraqi security forces last month and withdrew most US troops, to be recalled only to help in emergencies.

An Iraqi government statement said the group was planning "a dangerous criminal act" in Najaf. "An ideologically perverted group ... tried to insult an Islamic holy symbol, the Imam Mahdi, and use him as an ideological base to recruit followers," the statement said.

Mr Waeli said the death toll among Iraqi forces was about ten soldiers and police. Najaf's police chief was wounded, he said.

Two US soldiers were killed when their attack helicopter came down during the fighting. Iraqi officials and witnesses said it appeared to have been shot down.

Some of the fighters wore headbands describing themselves as "Soldiers of Heaven", Iraqi officials said.

It was not clear how many women and children were present: "It is very sad to bring families onto the battlefield," Mr Waeli said.

When police first approached the camp and tried to call on the group to leave, their leader replied: "I am the Mahdi and I want you to join me," Mr Waeli said, adding: "Today was supposed to be the day of his coming."

Other Iraqi officials said on Sunday that a man named Ahmed Hassani al-Yemeni, who had been working from an office in Najaf until it was closed down earlier this month, had assembled the group, claiming to be the messenger of the Mahdi.

Among previous violent insurrections supposedly led by the Mahdi were an opposition movement to British imperial forces in Sudan in the 1880s and a group of several hundred, including women, that took over the Grand Mosque in Mecca in 1979.

There are other precedents in Islamic history for such violent cults. They have declared temporal Muslim leaders illegitimate infidels and have drawn followers from both Sunni and Shiite believers, proclaiming a unity of inspiration from Muhammad.

As many as two million pilgrims gathered in Kerbala, 40 miles north of Najaf, for the climax of Ashura today and 11,000 troops and police were deployed. More than 100 people were killed there by suicide bombers three years ago, as Shiites marked the first Ashura after the end of restrictions imposed by Saddam.

BELIEFS THE SAME BUT DIFFERENT

WHILE Shi'ite and Sunni Muslims accept the concept of the Mahdi, they have basic differences about the timing and nature of his advent and guidance.

The Mahdi, according to Sunni and Shi'ite tradition, will arise at some point before the day of judgment, institute a kingdom of justice and, in the "end times", fight alongside the returned Islamic prophet Jesus against the Dajjal - the Antichrist.

But the Sunnis believe the Mahdi will be an ordinary man, as opposed to most Shi'ite Muslims, who believe him to be the returning 12th Iman, Muhammad ibn Hasan ibn Ali, son of the 11th Iman, or ultimate religious leader, who disappeared at his father's funeral aged five.

The most famous self-proclaimed Mahdi was Muhammad Ahmad, active in the late 1880s in the then Anglo-Egyptian Sudan.

Under his religious authority divided clans united to establish an Islamic republic as the first step in the global Islamic state.

His main opponent was the British general Charles George Gordon, whom he besieged at Khartoum between 1884-85, eventually taking the city.

Gen Gordon was beheaded by the victorious forces but the Mahdi did not long survive the assault, dying six months later of typhus.

The British then vowed to crush his forces, who had come under a new leader, Abdullah al-Taashi.

An army of 8,000 British regulars and 17,000 Sudanese and Egyptian soldiers under General Sir Horatio Kitchener met the Mahdi's army at the gates of Khartoum and destroyed it at the battle of Omdurman in 1898.