Iraq Denies Unrest in Wake of Cleric’s Killing

Iraq on Tuesday denied reports of Shiite unrest in the south of the country after the killing last week of a prominent cleric and said it suspected the United States of having a hand in the slaying.

Officials in Nasiriyah denied there was unrest in the mainly Shiite southern region where exiled Iraqi opposition groups said protests had erupted after the assassination of Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Sadeq Sadr on Friday.

“Nothing happened, and nothing will happen,” Abdel-Baqr Saadoon, ruling Baath Party member for Dhi Qar and Basra provinces, told journalists in Nasiriyah, about 230 miles southeast of Baghdad.

Iraq has said that it caught some members of the gang that killed the cleric and his two sons.

Iraqi Foreign Minister Mohammed Said Sahaf on Tuesday said that Iraq suspected a U.S. role. It was Baghdad’s first suggestion about who might have killed Sadr, the third Shiite cleric slain in Iraq in less than a year.

“The Americans have said openly that they have a $97-million plan to liberate Iraq. I do not rule out they played a role in this ugly crime,” Sahaf said during a visit to Beirut, where hundreds of Shiite Muslims marched to protest the assassination. The demonstrators shouted “Death to Saddam!” clearly holding Iraqi President Saddam Hussein responsible.

Meanwhile, the United States implicated the Iraqi government in the assassination and quoted reliable sources as saying security forces in Baghdad killed 25 people protesting the slaying.

State Department spokesman James Foley dismissed the Iraqi suggestion that Washington was behind the assassination and said it was “by all accounts” an act of Iraqi repression.

In Iraq, two U.S. F-15 fighters each dropped a 2,000-pound bomb on a military command and control installation Tuesday after planes patrolling the northern “no-fly” zone came under antiaircraft fire, Pentagon officials said.

Army Col. Richard Bridges added that in a separate incident, an unknown number of F-15s dropped 500-pound bombs on a multiple-launch rocket site.