Crowd of 300,000 mourn Shi'ite leader

BEATING their chests and calling for revenge, more than 300,000 Muslims began a two-day, 110-mile march yesterday to the holy city of Najaf to mourn a cherished Shi'ite leader assassinated in a car bombing.

The US military reported that 125 Iraqi's died in the attack on the Imam Ali mosque, a dramatic increase from earlier hospital reports of 85.

Najaf Governor Haider Mehadi yesterday requested that the FBI help Iraqi police investigate the truck bombing, a Coalition Provisional Authority official said. FBI officials were to travel to Najaf shortly to meet with authorities there, he said. FBI agents are leading the investigations into both the August 7 bombing of the Jordanian embassy in Baghdad and the attack on UN headquarters 12 days later.

The faithful followed a flatbed truck carrying a symbolic coffin for Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim, a moderate cleric and Saddam Hussein opponent.

Authorities said they could only find al-Hakim's hand, watch, wedding band and pen in the wreckage.

"Our revenge will be severe on the killers," read one of the many banners carried by mourners.

The Iraqi police handling the investigation into Friday's bombing say they have arrested 19 men many of them foreigners and all with admitted links to al-Qaida in connection with the blast. However, many Shi'ites blame the cleric's death on Saddam loyalists and the US-led coalition, which they say has failed to provide adequate security in the country since the dictator's fall.

In Najaf, Major Rick Hall, spokesman for the 1st Battalion 7th Marines, said the death toll stood at 125 with 142 wounded, some seriously.

He also said the Marine transfer of the south-central territory, including Najaf, to an international force lead by Poland, set for this week, had been put on hold.

"We now want to stay here and assist as much as possible," Hall said.

US forces are questioning two men handed over to them by the Iraqis, but will likely release them, he said.

Hall said the involvement of al-Qaida members in the Friday explosion was "an option we are looking at". He denied reports Marines would patrol around the Imam Ali shrine, the most sacred Shi'ite site in Iraq and the third holiest in the world after Mecca and Medina.

He said US forces had offered Marine patrols to the interim governing council in Baghdad and religious leaders in Najaf. An answer was expected in a day or two, he said.

As the mass of mourners left Baghdad, they carried angry banners denouncing both Saddam and the US president. "Saddam and Bush will not humiliate us," one read.

The procession began at the al-Kadhimiyah shrine, a sacred Shi'ite site in the capital, and was expected to grow as it wove its way south.

Police detained two Iraqis and two Saudis shortly after the Friday attack, and they provided information leading to the arrest of 15 other suspects, said a senior police official in Najaf, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Two Kuwaitis and six Palestinians with Jordanian passports were among the suspects, the official said. The remainder were Iraqis and Saudis, the official said, without giving a breakdown.