Murder cult a grim new twist for Iraq - Paging Colonel Walter E. Kurtz [View All]

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http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=154322007

MESSIANIC fervour has been added to Iraq's litany of bloodstained woes as authorities yesterday confirmed that the leader of a cult who claimed to be the Mahdi, the prophesied redeemer of Islam, was killed in a battle on Sunday near Najaf with hundreds of his followers.

Women and children who joined between 600 and 700 of his Jund al-Samaa, or "Soldiers of Heaven", on the outskirts of the Shiite holy city may be among the casualties, Shirwan al-Waeli, the national security minister, said. All those people not killed were detained by authorities. Many of them were wounded.

Iraqi troops, backed by United States forces confronted the group after learning it was planning an attack on the Shiite clerical establishment in Najaf today. "One of the signs of the coming of the Mahdi was to be the killing of the Ulema in Najaf," Mr Waeli said. "This was a perverse claim. No sane person could believe it."

Authorities have been on alert for days as hundreds of thousands of Shiite Muslims massed in the area to attend Ashura, the highpoint of their religious calendar, amid fears of attacks by Sunni Arab insurgents linked to al-Qaeda.

Ashura commemorates the seventh-century death of Imam Hussein, a grandson of the Prophet Muhammad.

But Sunday's battle involved a group of a different sort, a cult which Iraqi officials said included both Sunni and Shiite Muslims, as well as foreigners.