Basra: Violent clashes broke out simultaneously today in Iraq's southern cities of Basra and Nasiriyah between members of a Shiite messianic sect and Iraq's security forces, police said.

Street fighting erupted when members of the sect launched attacks on the security forces in the two cities, police and witnesses said. The small arms battles were continuing more than three hours later, AFP correspondents in the two towns said.

Basra police chief Major Abdul Jalil Khalaf told AFP that fighting was taking place in three quarters of the city between the security forces and members of a Shiite sect led by Ahmed al-Hassani Al-Yamani.

Witnesses said US-led coalition force warplanes were overflying Basra, some 550 kilometers south of Basra. The clashes in Nasiriyah, about 350 kilometers south of the Iraqi capital, were occurring in the east of the city, a police official said, asking not to be named.

The clashes come as Shiites across Iraq are marking Ashura, the holiest days on their calendar, when they commemorate the killing of Imam Hussein by armies of the Sunni caliph Yazid in 680.

Yamani claims to be an ambassador of Imam Mahdi, an eighth century imam who vanished as a boy and whom Shiites believe will return to bring justice to the world.

During Ashura last January, another militant sect, dubbing itself the Jund al-Samaa or "Soldiers of Heaven", clashed with US and Iraqi forces outside the holy city of Najaf.

Source : PTI