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Killings of Shia Clerics Called 'Bad Omen'

NPR | By Sylvia Poggioli

Published April 10, 2003 at 12:00 AM EDT

Two Shia clerics, one returning from exile and the other a Saddam loyalist, are hacked to death in the holiest mosque in Najaf. Observers fear the deaths could be the first round of bloodletting among rival Shia groups jockeying for power in post-Saddam Iraq. NPR's Sylvia Poggioli reports.

Sylvia Poggioli

Sylvia Poggioli is senior European correspondent for NPR's International Desk covering political, economic, and cultural news in Italy, the Vatican, Western Europe, and the Balkans. Poggioli's on-air reporting and analysis have encompassed the fall of communism in Eastern Europe, the turbulent civil war in the former Yugoslavia, and how immigration has transformed European societies.

See stories by Sylvia Poggioli