IRAQI RESISTANCE

Telegraph: Iraqis flock to Mahdi's Shia army

A militia of mostly Shia men is growing in response to a call to arms made by a maverick young cleric. Harry de Quetteville in Baghdad reports on Muqtader al-Sadr's army against US occupation.
As evening falls in the poor Shia suburb of Baghdad once known as Saddam City, dozens of volunteers queue under the watchful gaze of a local imam to sign up for the army.
But this is not the new Iraqi army sponsored and approved by the American-led administration. These soldiers will receive no monthly salary of £40. Here, prospective warriors are ready to serve, and die, for nothing.
Call to arms: volunteers sign-up at the Al-Ahrar Mosque
This is "Mahdi's army", a growing militia of mostly Shia men who have responded to the fiery call to arms made by a maverick young cleric, Muqtader al-Sadr, two weeks ago in the Shia holy city of Najaf.
Since then al-Sadr has led anti-US demonstrations and encouraged worshippers to resist the US "invaders" and Iraq's "Zionist" governing council, appointed by the coalition.

Now the ranks of this religious army, named after an ancient imam who Shias believe will return to save the world, have swollen into tens of thousands, perhaps more.
"On the very first day after the call, up to 1 million people signed," claimed Sheikh Hassan al-Zurgani, a Baghdad representative of the Hawza, a Shia seminary based in Najaf.