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More than 100,000 mourn slain Iraqi cleric
NAJAF, Iraq (CNN) -- Waving flags and carrying pictures of the late Ayatollah Mohammad Baqir al-Hakim, a crowd of Shiite Muslims estimated at more than 100,000 converged on Najaf on Tuesday to mourn the prominent cleric killed in a massive car bombing last week. Al-Hakim's brother, Abdel-Aziz al-Hakim, a member of the U.S.-picked Iraq Governing Council, was chosen to replace al-Hakim as the spiritual leader of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. After the funeral, an Iraqi police officer told CNN that police conducting searches in connection with the mosque bombing had found a stash of grenades and rifles and arrested eight people, adding to the five already in custody. The bombing Friday at the Imam Ali Mosque killed at least 83 people, including al-Hakim, who returned to Najaf in May after 23 years in exile in Iran. Hundreds more were wounded. (Preparations for funeral) (Gallery: Scenes of the aftermath, protests) Shiites were outraged at the bombing outside one of their sect's most sacred sites and the death of the ayatollah. Many Shiites blame loyalists of the Saddam Hussein regime for the bombing, and many mourners chanted for death to members of the deposed dictator's Baath Party. The funeral was the culmination of a three-day symbolic funeral procession that began in a Shiite section of Baghdad and traveled to Najaf, a town about 100 miles (160 kilometers) south of the Iraqi capital. (On the Scene: Ben Wedeman) U.S. forces, who kept an eye on the security situation from a healthy distance, brought fresh stocks of medical equipment and supplies to Najaf in anticipation of possible violence. Lt. Col. Chris Woodbridge, the Marine commander at Najaf, said the city was calm but "in mourning." The Bush administration will circulate a proposed Security Council resolution as early as Wednesday calling for a multinational force for Iraq and strengthening the U.N.'s role in the reconstruction of the country, administration officials told CNN. Meanwhile, in western Baghdad, a car bomb killed a police station employee Tuesday and wounded at least eight other people. A police official said the facility was largely protected from the blast by a wall separating it from the parking lot where the vehicle exploded. It was the fourth bombing in a month and a further signal that military forces are no longer the sole targets for the anti-U.S. and anticoalition violence that has continued now for four months past President Bush's announcement that the war's major combat operations were over. At least 123 people have died in the four terror attacks, all targeting those who are cooperating to at least some extent with the U.S.-backed Coalition Provisional Authority. The first attack killed 17 people at the Jordanian Embassy in early August, and a blast two weeks ago at U.N. headquarters in Baghdad killed 22 people, including Sergio Vieira de Mello, the top U.N. envoy to Iraq. The U.S.-backed coalition's top civilian administrator, L. Paul Bremer, pledged that the bombers would be "overcome." "Once again the terrorists have shown they will stop at nothing in the pursuit of their aims, but they shall be stopped," said Bremer, back in Baghdad after a brief trip to Washington. "We will stop them, we shall combat them and we shall overcome them." Bremer said "an influx of both foreign fighters and foreign terrorists" had augmented the Baath Party loyalists recently, making Iraq "one of the battlefields in the worldwide war against terrorism." (Map: Religious and ethnic groups in Iraq) Referring to the Najaf bombing as well as the bombings last month at the embassy and U.N. headquarters, Bremer said the coalition takes the incidents "very seriously." "All involved the loss of innocent life and, particularly in Najaf, a particularly heinous crime attacking one of the holiest sites in Islam," he said. "We will give every effort, we will leave no stone unturned, to investigate and help the Iraqi police bring the perpetrators to justice." Bush administration officials said the United States will circulate a proposed U.N. Security Council resolution as early as Wednesday calling for a multinational force for Iraq and strengthening the United Nations' role in the reconstruction of the country. (Full story) Other developments• In another step toward restoring self-rule in Iraq, the ministers of the Iraqi Governing Council were sworn into office Wednesday by the council's outgoing president, Ibrahim al-Jafari. Also, the U.S. military handed over control of five provinces in south-central Iraq to a multinational force led by Poland. (Full story) • A new report from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office says that under current policies, the U.S. military can maintain current troop strength -- 180,000 in and around Iraq -- only until March 2004. (Full story) • Former Army Secretary Thomas E. White, fired by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld last April, levels scathing criticism of the Pentagon's handling of the postwar reconstruction effort in a new book. White, who had a rocky relationship with Rumsfeld, says the war against Iraq was launched "without a cohesive, integrated plan to build a stable self-sufficient country within an identified timeframe." • Two U.S. military police officers died and one was wounded Monday after their Humvee hit a bomb on a highway in southern Baghdad, U.S. Central Command said Tuesday. In all, 286 U.S. troops have died in Iraq, including 146 since President Bush declared an end to major combat May 1. The latter number includes 67 combat deaths. • A plan to reposition three U.S. aircraft carriers around the world would temporarily leave the Central Command region, which includes Iraq, without an aircraft carrier presence for the first time since well before the buildup to the war, Pentagon officials said. The new plan would bring the USS Carl Vinson home in late September, after about eight months in the region. CNN correspondents Rym Brahimi, Caroline Faraj, Barbara Starr and Ben Wedeman, and translator Faris Qasira, contributed to this report. Copyright 2003 CNN. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Associated Press contributed to this report.
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