The American military has learned from people close to Iraq’s most powerful spiritual leader that accounts of an assassination attempt against him on Thursday were “a fabrication,” a senior military official said today. Contradictory reports about a possible attack on the cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, in the southern holy city of Najaf continued to circulate throughout the country. The American official said the military had no further information on how reports of an attack began. Early indications of an attack came from the spokesman for a prominent Iraqi politician and from security guards for the ayatollah, the reclusive leader of Iraq’s 15 million Shiites. The official added, though, that the American military did not have “eyes on the ground to say definitely what happened.” Full Story
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