IRAQ:US and Iraqi forces killed some 250 gunmen from an apocalyptic Muslim cult yesterday in a battle involving US tanks and aircraft near the Shia holy city of Najaf, Iraqi police, army and political sources said.
Two Americans were killed, the US military said, when an attack helicopter went down during the day-long battle in what was one of the strangest incidents of the four-year conflict. Iraqi officials said the aircraft appeared to have been shot down.
According to one Iraqi political source, hundreds of fighters drawn from both Sunni and Shia communities were still fighting. A reporter at the scene, 160km (100 miles) south of Baghdad, saw US tanks and heard blasts after dark. An Iraqi officer said F-16 jets were bombing the area.
Details of the day's fighting were sketchy and the origins of the fighters unclear.
An Iraqi army source said some of the dead wore headbands declaring themselves a "Soldier of Heaven".
The governor of Najaf province said the group had gathered in orchards near the city and had been planning to attack the main Shia clerical leadership today. It is the climax of the annual Shia rite of Ashura, marking a seventh-century battle which entrenched the schism between Shia and Sunni Islam.
Earlier, the governor described the fighters as Sunnis, the majority in the Arab world and the once-dominant minority in Iraq, where Shias have been in the ascendant since the US invasion of 2003. The two sects are embroiled in conflict that many fear is descending into all-out civil war.
But political and security sources said they were followers of Ahmed Hassani al-Yemeni and described him as an apocalyptic cult leader claiming to be the vanguard of the Mahdi - a messiah-like figure in Islam whose coming heralds the start of perfect world justice. He had been operating from an office in Najaf until it was raided and closed down about 10 days ago.
Similar violent cults have been a feature of Islamic history. They have declared temporal Muslim leaders illegitimate infidels and have drawn followers from both Sunni and Shia believers, proclaiming a unity of inspiration from Muhammad.
Hundreds of thousands of Shia pilgrims were gathering in the holy city of Kerbala, between Najaf and Baghdad, to mark Ashura (the death of Muhammad's grandson Hussein in the Battle of Kerbala in 680, which confirmed the split in Islam between supporters of rival claimants to the prophet's inheritance). In Baghdad, 13 people were killed in bombings in mainly Shia areas, police said. In a Sunni area, five girls were killed when a mortar struck their school yard.
Twin car bombs targeting ethnic Kurds killed 16 people as night fell in the northern oil city of Kirkuk, whose population is a volatile mix of Kurds, Turkmen, and Sunni and Shi Arabs.
Najaf governor Asaad Abu Gilel said the authorities had uncovered a plot to kill some of the clerics today to coincide with the climax of Ashura: "There is a conspiracy to kill the clergy on the 10th day of Muharram," he said, referring to today by the Muslim calendar.
A reporter about 1.5km (1 mile) from the fighting said he heard intense gunfire and saw US helicopters rocket groves sheltering militants. He saw smoke trailing from one helicopter before it came down.