Iraqi Shiites Rally: ‘Death to Israel, Death to America’
Over 100,000 protesters filled the streets of Baghdad to show support for Hezbollah. Attendees burned American and Israeli flags, and pledged their willingness to die for Hezbollah. (WashPo, NYT)
Over 100,000 protesters filled the streets of Baghdad to show support for Hezbollah. The demonstrators, followers of Shiite cleric Moqtada al Sadr, carried posters of Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah, waved Lebanese flags, chanted, ?No, no, no, Israel, no, no, no, America,?? and called on Hezbollah to strike Tel Aviv, according to the New York Times. Protesters also burned American and Israeli flags, and pledged their willingness to die for Hezbollah.
Your support is crucial…Washington Post:
Iraqi Shiites Chant ‘Death to Israel’
By MURTADA FARAJ The Associated Press Friday, August 4, 2006; 10:35 AM
BAGHDAD, Iraq — Hundreds of thousands of Shiites chanting “Death to Israel” and “Death to America” marched through the streets of Baghdad’s biggest Shiite district Friday in a show of support for Hezbollah militants battling Israeli troops in Lebanon.
No violence was reported during the rally in the Sadr City neighborhood. But at least 35 people were killed elsewhere in Iraq, many of them in a car bombing and gunbattle in the northern city of Mosul.
The demonstration was the biggest in the Middle East in support of Hezbollah since the Israeli army launched an offensive July 12 after a guerrilla raid on northern Israel. The protest was organized by radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, whose political movement built around the Mahdi Army militia has been modeled after Hezbollah.
Al-Sadr summoned followers from throughout the Shiite heartland of southern Iraq to converge on Baghdad for the rally but he did not attend. link
NYT:
100,000 March Against U.S. and Israel in Baghdad By DAMIEN CAVE and KIRK SEMPLE
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Aug. 4 ? More than 100,000 followers of the Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr marched today to show support for Hezbollah, denouncing Israel and the United States for the violence in Lebanon.
The protesters filled 20 blocks of a wide boulevard and dozens of side streets in the Shiite-dominated Sadr City section of the capital.
Waving Lebanese flags and posters of Hezbollah?s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, the protesters chanted, ?No, no, no, Israel, no, no, no, America,?? challenged Americans to fight them in their neighborhoods, and called on Hezbollah to strike at Tel Aviv. link
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