BAGHDAD: Muqtada Al Sadr yesterday called on Iraq's parliament to reject a US-Iraqi security pact as tens of thousands of his followers rallied in Baghdad against the deal.
Al Sadr's message was addressed to the crowd as well as Iraqi legislators and read by his aide Sheik Abdul-Hadi Al Mohammadawi at the demonstration, staged under tight security, in the eastern part of Baghdad.
The mass public show of opposition came as policemen shot dead a woman on suspicion of preparing a suicide attack on a checkpoint in the central town of Dhuluiyah.
Officials, meanwhile, said Iraqi and US forces had found a mass grave containing 11 decomposed bodies of men believed kidnapped by Al Qaeda militants last year.
The mass grave was found in Al Jillam, 25 km east of the central city of Samarra, said.
In anoher development, the International Union of Muslim Scholars, which met in Qatar, has called on Sunnis and Shi'ites to desist from efforts to win converts from the other, but blamed Iran for stoking sectarian tension in Arab countries.