Ayat Sistani reaches Holy Najaf with flocks

By: Ismail Zabeeh

HOLY CITY OF NAJAF, Iraq: Ayatullah Sayyed Ali As-Sistani, accompanied by tens of thousands of Iraqis, arrived in the holy city of Imam Ali (p) – Holy Najaf – on peace mission to save the city and the Haideri shrine from further damage as a mortar attack on Kufa mosque and a shooting at a demonstration claimed 74 people and wounded more than 350 others.

According to Al-Arabiya television Ayatullah Sistani had begun negotiations with representatives of Moqtada Sadr soon after his arrival.

“We have started contacts with Moqtada Sadr and in the coming hours we are waiting, hoping that we will succeed in saving the city from destruction,” said Ayatullah Sistani spokesman Hamed Al-Khaffaf.

He told reporters the cleric's peace plan called for all groups in Najaf to lay down their arms and for US forces to leave the city.

A 24-hour ceasefire began immediately upon his arrival at 3:00 PM on the order of Prime Minister Iyad Allawi. Witnesses said relative calm prevailed in the city. They said Iraqi police took extraordinary security measures in the area where Ayatullah Sistani is staying.

The gates of Imam Ali (p) shrine were forced open by a sea of weeping and chanting Muslims, ending a siege of the shrine which had lasted for days and weeks of fighting with US forces.

Akir Hassan, 63, woke up at 6:00 am (0200 GMT) to heed a call by his spiritual leader Ayatullah Ali As-Sistani to leave his village south of Kut to converge on the revered mausoleum.

Tears ran down his wrinkled face and his feet barely touched the ground as the elated crowd squeezed through the gates and into the shrine’s courtyard.

“We have been on the road since yesterday. When we reached the area, the National Guard and the Iraqi police tried to prevent us from heading towards the shrine, but there was nothing they could do,” said 20-year-old Hussein Noma, from the town of Amara.

“It is my duty to follow the orders of the ayatullah and it was the duty of all Muslims to work for a peaceful solution,” said Ali Rasheed, a young man from Kut.

“We answered the call of Sistani who ordered us to follow to Najaf to break the siege. Police sort of tried to arrest us, but there was nothing they could do. It's the end of the siege,” said one demonstrator Kazem Hamid.

Sadr’s Mehdi Army fighters brandished the Kalashnikovs and rocket-propelled grenade launchers as they watched the seemingly endless flow of marchers flowing into the holy site.

After a seven-hour journey, Ayatullah Sistani's motorcade stopped in Al-Saad one of the few relatively smart districts of Najaf.

Sistani's giant 30-vehicle convoy, greeted by thousands and escorted by dozens of police and national guard patrol vehicles, crawled along at 20 kilometres (12 miles) an hour on the long 400-kilometre (250-mile) journey north from Basra.

At towns along the way, thousands of men, women, children and the elderly, lined the streets to greet Sistani.

Behind the vehicles containing the ayatollah and his aides, more than 1,000 cars, pick-up trucks, taxis and buses were packed with Iraqis of all ages, waving banners and pictures of Ayatullah Sistani.

“We are here for the peace rally to stop the bloodshed in Najaf. It is the city of peace and we're answering Sistani's call,” said Jaffar Salih, 38, hanging out of a taxi.

Ayatullah Sistani returned to Iraq on Wednesday via Kuwait from London, where he had gone three weeks before for treatment for a heart problem just as the Najaf fighting erupted.

Tens of thousands of Iraqis in cars and on foot, responding to Sistani's call to rescue the holy city, converged on Holy Najaf from several regions, witnesses said. But Sistani told them to wait at the city's outskirts until he arrived.

END