A prominent Sunni cleric in Ramadi warned American forces Friday that the city would become their burial ground if Washington refused to pull out of Iraq. Sheikh Akram Ubayed Furaih, speaking at weekly prayers in the Al-Anbar stronghold 100 kilometers west of Baghdad, urged Shiites and other Iraqis to join armed resistance against the US-led occupation.
Furaih had previously served three months in US military detention, and his home had been searched in the days before the sermon.
Two clerics affiliated with the Muslim Scholars' Association addressed the same themes at Baghdad mosques, focusing on conditions in coalition-run detention facilities. Ahmed Abdel Gafur Samarrai, speaking at the Um al-Qura mosque, said he had received accounts from prisoners at the Um Qasr center, near the Kuwaiti border, describing serious hardship in the summer heat. He called on the United Nations to intervene, arguing that its endorsement of the occupation carried a corresponding obligation to those held inside.
A second cleric, Sheikh Hassan Samarrai, voiced the same criticism at a nearby mosque. Both men referenced a protest sit-in that the Iraqi Islamic Party had organized at the gates of the Um Qasr facility.
Historical summary. TurkishPress restated this AFP wire report, first published in July 2004, in its own words.