Iraq's Top Shiite Cleric Arrives in Najaf
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NAJAF, Iraq - Iraq's top Shiite cleric made a dramatic return to Najaf at the head of a massive convoy Thursday hoping to end three weeks of fighting in the holy city. But hours earlier, a mortar barrage hit a mosque filled with Iraqis preparing to join his march, killing 27 people and wounding 63...
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TONY JONES: Well, back to our top story and the Grand Ayatollah of Iraq&#39;s majority Shiite population has made a dramatic arrival in the besieged holy city of Najaf in a long convoy of vehicles.
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Representatives of Iraq's interim government have visited Iraq's top Shiite Muslim cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, in London where he is recovering after medical treatment, a statement said.
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NAJAF, Iraq - Iraq's top Shiite cleric made a dramatic return to Najaf at the head of a massive convoy Thursday hoping to end three weeks of fighting in the holy city, but hours earlier a mortar barrage slammed into a mosque filled with Iraqis preparing to join his march, killing 27 people.    Along with the mortar attack, another group of thousands of marchers heading into Najaf from its sister-city Kufa came under fire from an Iraqi National Guard base...
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NAJAF, Iraq - Rebel cleric Muqtada al-Sadr agreed Thursday to a peace deal presented by top Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali Husseini al-Sistani to end three weeks of fighting in the holy city of Najaf, according to a top aide to al-Sistani.    Al-Sistani, the most influential cleric among Iraq's Shiite majority, reached the deal in direct talks with al-Sadr in the evening, only hours after making a dramatic return to Najaf...
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Iraq&#39;s top Shi&#39;ite cleric made a sudden return to the country on Wednesday and said he had a plan to end an uprising in the &quot;burning city&quot; of Najaf, where fighting is creeping ever closer to its holiest shrine.
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NAJAF, Iraq - U.S. tanks and troops rolled back into the center of Najaf and battled with Shiite militants Sunday, reigniting violence in the holy city just as delegates in Baghdad opened a conference meant to be a landmark in the country's movement toward democracy...
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Iraqi political leaders arrived in the embattled city of Najaf Tuesday on a mission to persuade rebellious Shiite Muslim cleric Moqtada Sadr to disband his militia, vacate a religious shrine and participate in the country's political process.
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Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the most senior Shia cleric in Iraq, unexpectedly returned to his homeland yesterday after nearly three weeks overseas during which anarchy has rapidly taken hold.
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MARK COLVIN: To Iraq where the Shi&#39;ite leader Grand Ayatollah Ali al Sistani is on his way back to the holy city of Najaf, with around ten thousand followers joining his convoy from Basra in Iraq&#39;s south.
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NAJAF, Iraq : Iraq&#39;s top Shiite Muslim clerics, back in control of Najaf&#39;s Imam Ali shrine after a four-month militia occupation, met amid the ruins of the city as life spluttered back to normality.
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NAJAF, Iraq - Iraq's top Shiite cleric made a dramatic return to Najaf at the head of a massive convoy Thursday hoping to end three weeks of fighting in the holy city, but hours earlier a mortar barrage slammed into a mosque filled with Iraqis preparing to join his march, killing 27 people and wounding 63.    Along with the mortar attack, another group of thousands of marchers heading into Najaf from its sister-city Kufa came under fire from an Iraqi National Guard base...
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NAJAF, Iraq  - Iraq's top Shi'ite cleric made a  sudden return to the country on Wednesday and said he had a  plan to end an uprising in the "burning city" of Najaf, where  fighting is creeping ever closer to its holiest shrine.
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Iraq's most influential Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, returned to the country on Wednesday and urged Iraqis to march on the "burning city" of Najaf, where fighting is creeping ever closer to its sacred shrine.
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NAJAF, Iraq - Thousands of pilgrims streamed into the Imam Ali Shrine on Friday, and militants who had been holed up in the site left it, handing the keys to Shiite religious authorities after Iraq's top Shiite cleric brokered a peace deal to end three weeks of fighting in this holy city.    Dozens of militants piled Kalashnikov rifles in front of the offices of their leader, radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr...
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Moqtada Sadr, the radical Iraqi Shia cleric, appears in public for the first time since a US troop surge in Baghdad.
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NAJAF, Iraq - Guns were largely silent in Najaf for the first time in weeks and thousands of Iraqis thronged the revered Imam Ali shrine Friday after Iraq's top Shiite cleric made a dramatic return to this holy city and won agreement from a rebel cleric and the government to end the fighting between his militia and U.S.-Iraqi forces.    The renegade Muqtada al-Sadr accepted the proposal in a face-to-face meeting Thursday night with the 75-year-old Grand Ayatollah Ali Husseini al-Sistani...