BAGHDAD, Oct 14: One person was killed and 24 wounded in a shootout between two factions of Shia Muslims in Karbala, a doctor and witnesses said on Tuesday.

One man died in hospital of his wounds, while condition of one of the wounded was critical and he was taken to a hospital in Baghdad, said Saleh al-Hasnawi, assistant director of the Karbala hospital.

The violence erupted when some people tried to prevent about 100 members of Moqtada Sadr’s Mehdi Army from taking control of holy sites in Karbala.

Shooting occurred during the night and again on Tuesday morning, according to an AFP reporter at the scene.

The militiamen had tried to take over the mausoleums of Hazrat Abbas (RA) and Hazrat Imam Hussein (RA), the reporter witnessed.

They were pushed back by supporters of Sheikh Ali Sistani, a leading member of the Hawza, Iraq’s highest Shia authority.

The Mehdi Army members later regrouped in a mosque controlled by Moqtada Sadr followers, where they were surrounded by the rival group and Iraqi police.

Polish and Bulgarian troops of the US-led coalition who patrol the town did not intervene in the incidents, but later in the day dispatched patrols that erected checkpoints on main roads.

A relative of one of the men wounded in the clashes yelled out as he entered the hospital: “It’s the Americans who are trying to stir trouble among the Iraqi people, among the Shias.”

Sadr supporters, meanwhile, claimed that on Monday they detained a man who tried to smuggle an explosive device into the mosque where Sadr has his headquarters in Kufah, outside the holy city of Najaf, 180km south of Baghdad.—AFP