NEAR NAJAF, Iraq - More than 150 hard-line Iraqi fighters remained shuttered Thursday inside the gold-domed Mosque of Ali, while hundreds of demonstrators took to the streets of Najaf to keep U.S. troops from entering the Shiite Muslim shrine.
An uneasy peace finally descended on this holy city in southern Iraq (news - web sites), with U.S. troops pulling back from the mosque after the loyalists defied orders to abandon it.
"The city OK, the Mosque of Ali no!," the locals chanted before calm was restored.
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Abdel Majid al-Khoei, who arrived in Najaf early Thursday, said local clerics were attempting to negotiate a deal where Iraqi loyalists would leave the mosque in return for safe passage out of the city. Al-Khoei heads a London-based philanthropic group, and his father was a revered Shiite cleric who died in 1993.
Any damage to the shrine by U.S. forces could ignite rage in the Islamic world. The Ali Mosque holds the tomb of the Shiites' most beloved saint, Imam Ali Ibn Abu Talib, the Prophet Muhammad's cousin and son-in-law.
With its silver-covered tomb, ceramic-ornamented walls and resplendent golden dome and minarets, the shrine is considered a treasure of Islamic art.
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Najaf, whose name in Arabic means "a high land," is located about 100 miles south of Baghdad on a high desert plateau overlooking the world's largest cemetery, where Shiites aspire to bury their dead.
Najaf is also the seat of the Shiites' spiritual leaders, known as ayatollahs, and the center for scientific, literary and theological studies for the Islamic world.
U.S.-led troops first occupied the city on Wednesday, and they were reportedly welcomed by a crowd of cheering Iraqi civilians. That attitude could change if anything happens to the mosque.
"Iraq may have misused the sacred places, but they are defending themselves in their own country against foreign aggressors," said Mousa Qorbani, a hard-line Shiite cleric. "Any harm to the holy shrine will provoke unspecified severe consequences for the aggressors."
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