Thousands March in Baghdad Rally for Hezbollah

BAGHDAD —  With yellow Hezbollah banners above their heads and American and Israeli flags beneath their feet, tens of thousands of Iraqis marched in the capital after Friday prayers in support of the Shiite Muslim militia in Lebanon.

Protesters burned effigies of President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Wearing white funeral shrouds to suggest they were willing to become martyrs, many said they were ready to die for Hezbollah. The radical Shiite cleric, Muqtada Sadr, who controls the powerful Al Mahdi militia, had called for the demonstration.

Meanwhile, violence continued across Iraq, with gunmen and bomb explosions killing at least 31 people.

In Baghdad, armed and black-clad Al Mahdi militiamen mingled among the demonstrators as they walked through the streets. “We are his soldiers,” chanted the protesters. “The Mahdi army and Hezbollah will be victorious.”

“I wish from the bottom of my heart that there is a way to go and fight in Lebanon,” said Hassanain Taher, a 36-year-old mechanic. “I will go directly from here, without saying goodbye to my family.”

Organizers said half a million people participated in the march, but American military officials, apparently eager to downplay support for Hezbollah, put the figure at 14,000. An Iraqi working for The Times estimated there were at least 100,000 demonstrators.

The protesters came from around the country, some traveling several days. Taher had traveled almost 100 miles from the city of Diwaniya, south of Baghdad.

“I feel like I’m doing a sacred duty ordered by my religion and my sect,” he said.

Hassan Raad, 26, a day laborer from Baghdad’s Sadr City neighborhood, said he, too, wanted to fight for Hezbollah.

“We are here today, and wearing this shroud, so that even if they tell us now to board the buses and go to Lebanon we will go and fight,” he said. “We are looking for anyone who can help us to go to Lebanon and fight there.”

Some demonstrators carried coffins with signs saying “women and children of Lebanon.” Residents offered the protesters, marching in 110-degree heat, soft drinks and water.

Shiite preacher Hazim Araji led a chant, asking “our beloved Hezbollah” to “hit Tel Aviv.”

“We came here today despite all the explosions, car bombs, terrorists and Saddamists,” Araji said at Friday prayers before the march. “We are not terrified by the airplanes that are now flying over us,” he said, pointing to hovering American helicopters.

Despite vicious sectarian fighting, Iraqis appear to be uniting against what they view as a larger threat. Their sentiments may complicate matters for the U.S.-backed government of Prime Minister Nouri Maliki.

In northern Iraq, where 19 people were killed in mortar attacks and bombings in the Mosul area, Sunni preachers joined in the condemnation of Israel’s military campaign in Lebanon.

“What the Israeli-Zionist forces are doing is a clear proof that the current war is a religious one aimed at destroying Islam,” said Sheik Ibrahim Hasan. He called on worshipers to be “like one united body so as to be able to fight the enemies of Allah.”

Iraqi security forces struggled to quell the violence in Mosul and local authorities announced a daylong curfew for today.

The U.S. military confirmed that two soldiers assigned to the 1st Brigade, 1st Armored Division were killed Friday in Al Anbar province. Iraqi officials said seven people were killed and five injured in separate roadside bombings in Baghdad.

In the predominately Shiite cities of Najaf and Samawah, angry young men also demonstrated in support of Hezbollah.

Iraqi police and officials associated with Sadr said gunmen attacked a convoy of the cleric’s followers in southern Baghdad as they returned to the holy cities of Najaf and Karbala after the rally. Three people were killed and 10 injured.

Many Iraqi Shiites resent the crackdown on militias in Baghdad and the southern city of Basra, seeing it as an attempt to take away their last line of defense against Sunni Arab extremists. Shiite militias draw young, unemployed men into what many regard as productive community service, such as guarding mosques during Friday prayers and keeping an eye on neighborhoods.

To tackle the lawlessness and sectarian violence in Baghdad, the United States is preparing to increase its troops there from 9,000 to more than 13,000. American officials say that if the capital can be secured, the rest of the country can be brought to order.

However, some observers fear that the continued fighting in Lebanon, which has led to growing support for Hezbollah among Iraqis, will further destabilize Iraq, which also has a Shiite majority and sizable Shiite militias.

In a confidential memo leaked to the media this week, the outgoing British ambassador to Iraq, William Patey, said, “If we are to avoid a descent into civil war and anarchy, then preventing [Sadr’s Al Mahdi militia] from developing into a state within a state, as Hezbollah has done in Lebanon, will be a priority.”

In 2004, Sadr’s followers fought American soldiers in a large-scale urban battle in Najaf and in Sadr City. However, afterward, Sadr reinvented himself as a politician and his followers have as many as 35 seats in the Iraqi parliament, and hold some ministries, much as Hezbollah has become a part of the Lebanese government. U.S. officials say his militia is behind many of the executions and bombings in Baghdad.

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Times staff writers Saif Rasheed, Zainab Hussein and Jeffrey Fleishman in Baghdad, a special correspondent in Sadr City, and special correspondent Ruaa Zarary in Mosul contributed to this report.