CAIRO — The slaying of Iraq's highest-ranking Shiite Muslim cleric by unidentified gunmen ignited anti-government riots in Baghdad and several other Iraqi cities Saturday, according to opposition spokesmen whose reports were partially corroborated by Western journalists in Baghdad.
Iraq's government, however, denied that any clashes had taken place and denounced the accounts of unrest as "baseless."
Shiite opposition groups in exile reported that several people were killed and wounded in clashes that broke out after the announcement of the slaying of Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Sadeq Sadr, spiritual leader of Iraq's Shiite Muslim majority.
Sadr and his two sons were killed Friday, according to the Iraqi News Agency, which said several suspects had been arrested.
After the announcement, Cable News Network quoted witnesses as saying that Shiites had clashed with police in the poor, predominantly Shiite suburb of Baghdad known as Saddam City.
Journalists saw an unusual deployment of heavily armed security forces patrolling the streets in that area, CNN said.
The reported unrest would be highly unusual for Iraq, a country controlled by security forces and secret police loyal to President Saddam Hussein's regime.
The Iraqi regime has come under heavy pressure recently, first with a four-day U.S.-British missile and bombing campaign in December, then with the intermittent bombing since and with strong statements by the U.S. government offering to help the Iraqi people work for the overthrow of Hussein.
Although Iraqi state media denounced the perpetrators of the "vicious" murders of Sadr and his sons, Shiites outside Iraq tended to blame the regime for the killings, as they did after the slayings of two other senior Shiite clerics and the attempted assassination of a third in the past 10 months.
Opposition spokesmen portrayed the unrest Saturday as a spontaneous eruption of rage against the government.
"Clashes between angry Iraqi citizens and Hussein's repressive forces took place in Baghdad, Najaf, Karbala and all governorates in the south," said the Al Dawa Shiite opposition party in a statement issued in Damascus, Syria.
The Iraqi National Congress, an umbrella organization for Iraqi opposition groups, issued a statement in London saying that Najaf and Kufa in southern Iraq were "besieged by the forces of the Republican Guard due to the mounting and explosive atmosphere of grievance and unrest." It said there had been "numerous deaths and injuries."
