Thirteen people were killed and about 75 were wounded on Thursday when US troops opened fire in Kufa at a crowd en route to the holy city of Najaf, Xinhua correspondent said.

The shooting occurred when hundreds of people were marching from Imam Issa al-Tammar in Kufa to Najaf under the call of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani to save the sacred Imam Ali Shrine.

US forces opened fire on the crowd, killing 13 people and injuring about 75 others, Haider abdul Hussein, a doctor in Kufa told Xinhua.

As a response to the attack, the Mehdi Army led by radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr fired mortar shells and rocket-propelled grenades at a US military base in Kufa, Xinhua correspondent said.

Earlier on Thursday, mortar attacks on one main mosque in Kufa, 10 km northeast of Najaf, killed at least 25 people and wounded over 60 when thousands of Sadr's supporters were gathering there and planned to march to Najaf.

Source: Xinhua