When the bomb went off shortly after 2 p.m., the narrow lane, crammed with people, acted as a muffler. Just 300 yards away there was only a low boom, like a faraway thunderclap. It was as if the sound had been absorbed by the tens of thousands of devout Shi'ites gathered outside their faith's holiest shrine to listen to Friday prayers over the speakers. But then a louder sound rumbled down the lane and into the nearby square--the anguished shriek emerging from a thousand throats. Panicked worshippers charged into the square, their dust-covered dishdashas spattered with blood. "It's a bomb, a bomb!" screamed a man, his eyes wide with fear, his face pockmarked by shrap-shrapnel lacerations. "I think they have murdered the Syed."
Whoever they turn out to be, the man was right. They had. Among the more than 80 people who died when a car bomb exploded outside the shrine of Imam Ali in Najaf, 120 miles south of Baghdad, was Ayatullah Mohammed Bakir al-Hakim, one of the nation's most senior Shi'ite clerics and the founder of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI). He had been leading the Friday prayers in the mosque. The atrocity was the most devastating event since the end of formal hostilities in the Iraq war and counts as one of the worst single acts of violence against civilians anywhere in the world in modern times. In Washington, President Bush said the bombing "demonstrates the cruelty and desperation of the enemies of the Iraqi people." It demonstrates something else too: the extraordinary complexity of the challenge facing U.S. troops in Iraq, who must contend with not just violence directed at them but also the possibility of widespread strife among Iraq's various political, ethnic and religious groups.
At first the Ayatullah's fate was unclear. The blast occurred moments after the Friday morning prayers, and most of those outside believed he had not yet left the shrine to Ali, the Prophet Muhammad's son-in-law, in the heart of Najaf. Assuming that al-Hakim was still inside, many had thought he would have been protected from the explosion by the shrine's massive western wall and its huge door, the Bab-e-Kibbleh, which remained standing. But when the bomb went off, the 64-year-old cleric was outside the shrine and about to get into his car. He was killed instantly.
Across the lane from the wall, a crater in the black-tar road marked the spot where the bomb exploded. Within 30 ft. were the twisted carcasses of at least seven cars--alHakim's white Toyota Land Cruiser among them--most mangled beyond recognition and still ablaze. In the market across from the shrine, the blast reduced several shops to mounds of rubble. Street vendors' stalls that had been laden with dried fruits and nuts were incinerated, their contents sprayed across the area. The few people who ran toward the bomb site were showered by a hail of pistachios and almonds.