BAGHDAD – A suicide bomber killed 12 people in an Iraqi mosque yesterday while thousands of followers of anti-US Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr demonstrated in Baghdad after parliament passed a pact allowing US troops to remain through to 2011.
Some 9,000 people protested in Baghdad’s Shia slum of Sadr City after Friday prayers, burning a US flag and holding banners reading “No, no to the agreement”. About 2,500 people held a similar rally in the southern city of Basra.
“I express my condolences to the Iraqi people on this grave occasion, in which they are harmed by the . . . pact of shame and degradation,” said Mr Sadr, whose militia has fought US troops many times, in a statement read to followers on his behalf. He told his followers to wear black to mourn the passage of the deal, under which US troops will withdraw from Iraqi towns and cities by mid-2009, and leave the country by the end of 2011.
Police said that earlier yesterday, a suicide bomber killed 12 people and wounded 17 others inside a Shia mosque visited mainly by Sadr supporters 60km (40 miles) south of Baghdad.
The US military put the bomber’s tally at eight killed and 15 wounded as they queued outside the mosque to enter for Friday prayers. UN officials say such attacks are aimed at provoking renewed sectarian fighting between minority Sunni Arabs, once affiliated with al-Qaeda, and the majority Shia now ruling Iraq.
In central Baghdad, a suicide car bomber killed two people and wounded 14 others, police said, and in Sadr City a roadside bomb targeting a US patrol wounded one person, the US military said.
Sadrist lawmakers opposed the security deal with the US to the last, banging desks and chanting slogans during the parliamentary session that passed it on Thursday.
They consider the US military presence an occupation and want an immediate withdrawal. The deal curbs US military powers to arrest Iraqis and conduct operations, shifting greater responsibility onto Iraq’s security forces to keep the peace. Violence is at four-year lows, but car bombings and suicide blasts are still common.
In the first comments by a senior Iranian figure since the passage of the pact, Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, who heads a powerful constitutional watchdog, said Washington had forced its passage with pressure and threats. “Yesterday, this pact was finally approved despite the . . . problems it had. This ratification was not a normal one,” Ayatollah Jannati, head of the Guardian Council, told prayer worshippers in Tehran in a sermon broadcast on state radio.
He likened its signing to “somebody standing over your head with a sword”, saying Washington had threatened to indirectly overthrow the Iraqi government if it was not ratified. Iran, which has ties with prime minister Nuri al-Maliki’s Shia-led government, has repeatedly blamed the US for the violence in Iraq since 2003.
The US military has long accused Iran of arming, training and funding small Shia militia units which attack US troops and Iraqi forces, a charge Tehran denies. Under the pact, the US will no longer be able to hold Iraqi suspects detained during the insurgency, and 16,000 mainly Sunni Arab prisoners will be handed over to Iraqi authorities or released.
Human rights group Amnesty International said thousands could face torture or execution as the pact provided no safeguards for prisoner rights. – (Reuters)