Messianic Shiites slaughtered by American and Iraqi forces on eve of Ashura

More than 300 followers of a Shia Imam, Samer Abu Kamar, who claimed to be the coming Mahdi (islamic Messiah) were killed in a daylong bombardment by U.S. helicopters, jets and armored vehicles near the Iraqi city of Najaf Monday, according to a Los Angeles Times report.

Iraqi officials offered conflicting accounts of the identity and motives of the heavily armed fighters, describing them as foreign fighters, Sunni Arab nationalists, loyalists of executed former dictator Saddam Hussein, or followers, known as "Soldiers of Heaven", of a messianic death cult.

Read more about this messianic cult at bbc.co.uk...

The Iraqi forces were prompted to carry out the seige through fear the group, numbering at least 500, was planning to attack a Shiite shrine in Najaf during the Ashura celebrations.

Despite the thwarted attack, bombers struck Shiite worshippers in two cities Tuesday and gunmen ambushed a busload of pilgrims in a series of attacks that killed at least 58 people on the Shiites' holiest day, according to an AP report.

Ashura is marked by Shiite rituals of self-flagellation with whips made of chains and knife blades. These public celebrations were banned by Hussein, and continue to be frowned upon by Sunni Muslims.

Here are some photos of the Ashura rituals:















Read more about the significance of Ashura at Slate.com...

Iraq violence rages as al Qaeda imports "large numbers" of suicide bombers

A report on cnn.com today describes a suspected terrorist detained in Mosul as responsible "for bringing in large numbers of suicide bombers into Iraq." According to the Iraqi military, the detainee had ties to the radical Islamic terrorist group al Qaeda.

Meanwhile, violence raged across Iraq, as exploding bombs and other attacks killed at least 32 and wounded dozens others in Baghdad. In response to the renewed violence following the hanging of Saddam Hussein and two of his top aides, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki pledged to target lawlessness from any quarter: "No school, house, mosque or husseinya [Shiite mosques] will be out of reach of our forces if they are harboring outlaws. The same for political party headquarters."

"I say (our law-and-order plan is) targeting everyone..."

How long can it be before Baghdad burns? Let it burn, so we can bring our troops home: "I shall set fire to his cities, and it will devour all his environs... So the peoples will toil for nothing, and the nations become exhausted for (the) fire... We applied healing to Babylon, but she was not healed; forsake her and let us each go to his own country..." (Jer 50:32; 51:58; 51:9)

Twin bombs escalate renewed insurgency following hangings

At least 90 people were dead and about 180 wounded in bombings targeting Shiite areas in and around Baghdad today, as reported by Sinan Slaheddin, an Associated Press writer in Baghdad.

78 people were killed and more than 150 wounded when two nearly simultaneous bombs struck a predominantly Shiite commercial area in central Baghdad, while a bomb followed by mortar attack struck a market in a predominantly Shiite town north of Baghdad, killing at least 12 people and wounding nearly 30.

According to the AP report, the latest bombings were a further sign of what appears to be a renewed campaign of Sunni insurgent violence against Shiite targets, following the executions of Saddam Hussein and two of his top aides, one of which had been decapitated in his hanging.

While this violence is not yet the burning of the cities predicted by the prophet Jeremiah to follow the punishment of the "arrogant one", it certainly displays the mood of the Sunni insurgency. Coupled with the announcement Sunday by Iraqi officials that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has dropped his protection of Shiite sheik al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia, the country is a powder-keg heating up from both ends, day by day.

The remaining calamity from Saddam's execution forward -

The arrogant one will be punished (Jer 50:31). The cities will burn (Jer 50:32). The nations will be exhausted for the fire (Jer 51:58). The nations will say, "We applied healing to Babylon, but she was not healed; forsake her, and let us each return to his own country" (Jer 51:9). "The LORD will arouse the spirit of the kings of the Medes (Kurds), because his purpose is against Babylon to destroy it" (Jer 51:11). "Devote all her army to destruction, and they will fall down slain in the land of the Chaldeans" (Jer 51:3-4). "A sword against her treasures, and they will be plundered!" (Jer 50:37). "The sea (will) come up over Babylon; she (will be) engulfed with its tumultuous waves" (Jer 51:42). "I shall dry up her sea and make her fountain dry" (Jer 51:36). "And Babylon will become a heap of ruins, a haunt for jackals, an object of horror and hissing, without inhabitants" (Jer 51:37).

The insurgency strikes back

While it is not yet the burning of the cities -- we await that fulfillment up next, the bombing that killed 60 and wounded 110 others at Mustansiriya University in a Shiite neighborhood of northeastern Baghdad as reported by CNN does indicate the mood of the insurgency following the hanging of two of Saddam Hussein's top aides. One of those hanged, Saddam's half-brother Barzan Hassan, was decapitated by the fall through the trap door, apparently because he had been given too much rope and fell too far for a man of his weight.

In other violence, gunmen riding motorcycles in the Mehdi Army-controlled Bunouk area of eastern Baghdad opened fire on a marketplace and killed 10 civilians. Seven others were wounded. In Sadr City, a car bomb killed four and wounded 10. In central Baghdad, a bomb exploded near a police convoy, while a second bomb exploded when police responded. The two bombs killed 15 people and wounded 70. In Baghdad's Karrada section, a bomb killed two police officers and two civilians, and wounded 10.

Meanwhile, 92 people have been "detained" by authorities in raids on insurgent hideouts in southern Baghdad.

Sunnis "horrified" and "angry" over decapitation

Reuters reported today that, while Iraqi Shiites welcomed the hanging of two aides of Saddam Hussein in the early hours Monday, Iraqi Sunnis and even some Shiites were horrified that Saddam's half-brother Barzan Hassan had his head torn from his body by the force of the rope during the execution.

Ali Abbas Ridha, a Shiite in Mosul, said he feared the executions would provoke violence.

The two aides, Hassan, the former chief of Hussein's secret police, and Awad Bandar, the chief judge under the former regime, were hanged side by side after being sentenced to death in November for their roles in the killings of 148 men and boys after a 1982 assassination attempt in Dujail, Iraq, CNN reported.

Video of the hangings were shown to a group of journalists to show "that the beheading was accidental."

A slice of Americana while we wait

As U.S. soldiers continue to stand at the ready in Iraq and I await the burning of the cities of Babylon, here is a small slice of Americana to pass a few moments of time, a selection from The Del McCoury Band, his "She Can't Burn Me Now"...

Cell-phone video of execution outrages Sunnis

Bitter exchanges between Saddam Hussein and his Shiite executioners were caught on cell-phone video and leaked to the Iraqi public less than 24 hours after he was hanged, as reported by CNN January 1, 2007.

After Hussein prays, his guards shout, "Muqtada! Muqtada! Muqtada!", a reference to Muqtada al-Sadr, the radical Shiite cleric whose father founded the Shiite Dawa movement, the political party to which Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki belongs.

The taunts continued until the trapdoor dropped and Hussein was dead. Immediately after, according to the CNN report, Shiite witnesses danced around his body, chanting celebratory slogans.

According to the report, the video has outraged Iraqi Sunnis. Hundreds of Sunnis Muslims, angered by the way Hussein's hanging was carried out, "took to the streets in mainly peaceful demontrations" in the Sunni enclaves across the country, according to a report today by Lauren Frayer, Associated Press Writer.

Sunnis were not only outraged by the taunts and sectarian partisanship shown in the execution chamber, but also by the timing of the execution. Saddam was put to death the day Sunnis began their celebrations for Eid al-Adha, despite the Iraqi law stating that "no verdict should be implemented during the official holidays or religious festivals", according to Iraqi Judge Rizgar Mohammed Amin, a Kurd.

On the first day of the New Year, Iraqi police reported finding another 40 bodies in Baghdad, handcuffed, blindfolded and bullet-riddled.