BAGHDAD, May 25 (UPI) -- U.S. forces did not damage a holy shrine in Najaf, Iraq, a military spokesman in Baghdad said Tuesday.
The mosque suffered damage from a rocket attack overnight, news reports said.
"The coalition forces had no involvement in the damage to the Imam Ali Mosque," said Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt. "We have heard different reports of what caused it, whether it was fighting between two different factions inside the city or whether it was ... Moqtada's militia firing from the cemetery onto the area at the mosque to try to provoke outrage so they could blame it on the coalition forces."
Kimmitt told reporters U.S. forces were not near the mosque -- a holy Shiite site -- and did not launch rockets or weapons at the shrine. It has been the scene of repeated violence in the last year, including the assassination of two leading clerics. One of those deaths has been blamed on rebel Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr.
Sadr's forces used a shrine as a weapons cache and military base in Karbala but were chased out last weekend, a senior U.S. military official said.
