A sea of mourners filled northern Baghdad at the funeral of a leading Shia cleric killed in a bomb attack his brother blamed partly on US forces for failing to bring security to Iraq.
Men in tears and women dressed in black thronged streets around Baghdad's golden-domed Mousa al-Kadhim mosque for the start of the funeral rites of Ayatollah Mohammed Baqer al-Hakim, killed along with scores of his followers on Friday.
US forces said on Saturday three people had been arrested in connection with the bombing. No group has admitted responsibility for the attack.
The mourners, their numbers at least in the high tens of thousands, chanted and beat their chests in traditional Shia rituals as the coffin, draped in a black cloth was carried through the crowd to a truck, guarded by men with automatic rifles.
The cleric, who returned to Iraq from 23 years of exile in Iran after US-led forces toppled Saddam Hussein in April, advocated cautious co-operation with the occupying forces.
He headed the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), one of the country's most prominent groups of Shias who make up around 60 percent of Iraq's 26 million population.
Iran, which saw him as an ally, announced three days of mourning and state television showed hundreds of mourners converging on a Tehran mosque for a ceremony led by supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khameni.
Many Shias have blamed Friday's attack on diehard supporters of Saddam, who repressed the Shias when he was in power.
Some analysts have suggested Shias opposed to Mr al-Hakim's moderate political positions could be to blame.
But Mr Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the brother of the slain cleric who sits on Iraq's US-appointed Governing Council told the crowd of mourners in Baghdad that the occupying forces bore some responsibility as security was in their hands.
"These troops are ultimately responsible for the innocent blood which is being shed every day in Najaf, Baghdad, Basra and Mosul and all over Iraq."
Mr Mohammed Bahr al-Uloum, a leading Shia scholar, said he was suspending his membership of the Governing Council in protest at the ayatollah's killing.
He said in a statement that there was "a dangerous security void in Iraq, especially in Najaf."
One day before he was killed, Mr al-Hakim criticised US forces for failing to prevent an earlier bombing in Najaf on August 24th, in which another Shia cleric, Ayatollah Mohammed Saeed al-Hakim, was hurt.
Iraq's US-led interim administration says it faces a tough balancing act as it wants to provide security but not offend Muslims by placing foreign troops near holy sites.
US officials have said little about who they think was behind the bombing, but have cited foreign Islamic militants as possible suspects for similar attacks earlier this month which targeted the UN offices and the Jordanian embassy in Baghdad.
Most violence in Iraq is directed against the occupation forces and Iraqi's helping them. It has killed 65 US and 11 British soldiers since the official end of major combat on May 1st.
In the latest incident, US forces killed six Iraqis who attacked their convoy with rocket-propelled grenades and small arms fire, a US military spokesman said yesterday.
Two US soldiers were wounded in the incident on Saturday just west of the northern city of Kirkuk, the official said.
- (REUTERS)