A picture really is worth a thousand words. What do you make of this?

An Iraqi security officer holds a poster of Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr during a demonstration against terrorism by Ministry of Electricity workers in Baghdad, Iraq (news - web sites), Thursday, March 24, 2005. Insurgents kept up their campaign Thursday against Iraqi security forces and U.S. troops, targeting Americans with roadside bombs in the north and attacking Iraq's nascent army in the capital(AP Photo/Karim Kadim)

Iraqi Muslim worshippers, reflected on a portrait of the Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, perform Friday Prayers outside al-Sadr's office in eastern Baghdad March 25, 2005. REUTERS/Ali Jasim

Death At 'immoral' Picnic in the Park

The students had begun to lay out their picnic in the spring sunshine when the men attacked.

"There were dozens of them, armed with guns, and they poured into the park," Ali al-Azawi, 21, the engineering student who had organised the gathering in Basra, said.

"They started shouting at us that we were immoral, that we were meeting boys and girls together and playing music and that this was against Islam.

"They began shooting in the air and people screamed. Then, with one order, they began beating us with their sticks and rifle butts." Two students were said to have been killed.

Standing over them as the blows rained down was the man who gave the order, dressed in dark clerical garb and wearing a black turban. Ali recognised him immediately as a follower of Hojatoleslam Moqtada al-Sadr, the radical Shia cleric. Ali realised then that the armed men were members of Hojatoleslam al-Sadr's Mehdi Army, a private militia that fought American forces last year and is now enforcing its own firebrand version of Islam.

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An Iraqi Police commando patrols in the area around the Jordanian embassy in Baghdad, Iraq (news - web sites) Monday, March 21, 2005. Iraq and neighboring Jordan are engaged in a diplomatic spat, announcing a tit-for-tat withdrawal of high-level representatives Sunday in a growing dispute over Shiite Muslim claims that Jordan is failing to block terrorists from entering Iraq. Sunday's events capped a week of rising tensions that included a protest in which Shiite demonstrators raised the Iraqi flag over the Jordanian embassy, where it was still flying Monday.(AP Photo/Karim Kadim)