Demonstrations, Denunciations in Iraq over Sharon Murder of Sheikh Yassin

Xinhua reports that a wide range of Iraqi political forces on Tuesday condemned Sharon's murder of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, a religious leader of Hamas, the day before.

The Board of Muslim clerics in Fallujah, 50 km west of Baghdad, "condemned the assassination and promised immediate revenge against the coalition soldiers in Iraq." Ash-Sharq al-Awsat reports that Fallujah was closed Tuesday in a general strike. US troops there clashed with guerrillas in a fight that left one Iraqi dead. In Ramadi, there was a big demonstration.

Radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr said the attack was "criminal" and that "the Zionists have left only one choice for the Arabs, that of fighting and jihad".

The interim Governing Council issued a communique saying, "It is a proof of the emptiness of the Israeli authority and a destruction of the peace endeavors in the region . . . This operation would only consolidate the terrorist acts in the world and would not bring peace to the region," the message claimed.

Xinhua alleged that "Many of the Iraqis, who suffer the American occupation of Iraq, relate their case with that of the Palestinian people, under the Israeli occupation."

In an apparently unrelated incidents, some eleven Iraqis were killed by snipers on Tuesday, including a group of police trainees in a bus near Hilla and two police in Kirkuk.