by Ahmed Fadaam
NAJAF, Iraq, Aug 28 (AFP) - Iraq`s top Shiite Muslim clerics, back in control of Najaf`s Imam Ali shrine after a fourth-month militia occupation, met amid the ruins of the city on Saturday as life spluttered back to normality.
But in the main northern city of Mosul, a senior woman academic was shot dead by unknown gunmen as she drove to her university department, police said.
Iman Abdul Moneam Younis, head of translation at Mosul University`s College of Art, died instantly when gunmen drew up alongside her in a car and opened fire, before speeding off, said Major Falah Hassan.
The 36-year-old had complained of receiving death threats, Hassan added.
In Najaf the main boulevards were again clogged with traffic as shops reopened and residents whose homes were pummelled to dust seethed with fury at radical cleric Moqtada Sadr for his three-week battle against US-led troops.
Iraq`s revered Shiite spiritual leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who forced Sadr to end the conflict and quit the Imam Ali shrine, met at his home with Grand Ayatollahs Mohammed Saad al-Hakim and Ishaq al-Fayad for 30 minutes.
"They congratulated Ali Sistani for his recovery from medical treatment abroad and he thanked God for preserving them from the danger in the holy city during these such difficult days," said Sistani representative Hamid Khaffaf.
The elderly Iranian-born ayatollah was granted a 24-hour ceasefire by Baghdad and the US military on Thursday to negotiate an end to the standoff.
A spokesman had said the clerics would discuss war-torn Najaf, one day after Sadr`s supporters quit the shrine, one of the most important in Shiite Islam, and returned its keys to the religious authorities known as the Marjaiya.
Sistani`s office has already called for an immediate inquiry into the shooting of supporters trying to get into the holy city on the same day in which dozens were killed en route from the twin city of Kufa.
With the once glorious pilgrimage city reduced to ruins, the task of reconstruction is enormous for the interim government, from whom Sistani has also demanded compensation for those who suffered in the assault.
Peace continued for a second day, but the Mehdi Army has refused to surrender its weapons to Iraqi authorities, defying one of three conditions laid down by the caretaker government for halting its US-backed assault on the militia.
Instead, fighters hid their Kalashnikov rifles at home, while mortars and rocket-propelled grenade launchers were stashed in safe houses in the Old City.
"They will hide their weapons but will not hand them over to the police or to the army," Sadr spokesman Sheikh Ahmed Shaibani told AFP.
"The Americans thought that they could exterminate the Mehdi Army, but our fighters are still here. They will be able to go back to their work whilst remaining an army."
After a deal in June that ended Sadr`s first uprising against US-led troops, militiamen also hid their weapons. Fighting broke out again two months later.
The handover of the Imam Ali mausoleum was concluded a week after Sadr aides first promised but failed to surrender the keys to the shrine, triggering further US air raids that reduced the Old City area around the shrine to rubble.
Hastily agreeing to Sistani`s five-point deal and evacuating his shrine bastion, Sadr made no commitment to surrendering his arms to the authorities.
From the outset of the conflict, when the Mehdi Army attacked the Najaf police headquarters, Prime Minister Iyad Allawi insisted that the rebel cleric disarm his militia, quit the shrine and join politics.
But Sistani`s document, signed within 48 hours of the ayatollah`s return to Iraq from medical treatment in London, stipulates that only Najaf and Kufa must be disarmed and all armed groups leave, never to return.
It makes no mention of the militia`s Baghdad stronghold of Sadr City or of other Shiite Muslim cities in the south where the Mehdi Army has clashed with foreign troops and Iraqi security forces.
Meanwhile, Al-Jazeera television quoted Iraqi police as saying the bodies of two Turkish hostages shot dead were found in the oil refinery town of Baiji.
A group calling itself the "Islamic Tawheed (Unification) Group" said on an Islamist website it would use force to stop Turkey sending "military equipment and assistance to the invading forces" via its border with Iraq.