Aftermath mosque attack, shooting, injured

1. Various exteriors of Kufa's main mosque 2. Sandal lying in bloodied pool 3. People standing by mosque with damaged paving 4. Sandal and other belongings on ground 5. Blood on pavement 6. Dried blood on ground 7. People standing looking at damage with man yelling 8. People sitting on ground chanting and beating chests in prayer 9. Men chanting 10. Street with protesters 11. Ambulances speeding to hospital 12. Hospital exterior and hospital sign 13. Various of injured lying on grass outside hospital entrance 14. Various of injured lying on floor inside hospital 15. Various of injured lying on hospital beds 16. Various of injured lying on beds 17. Hospital officials trying to stop injured being taken into crowded hospital 18. Various of relatives injured lying on ground outside hospital 19. Various people chanting on march to Najaf 20. Audio of gunfire, people looking around 21. Injured man with crowd surrounding him 22. Injured man walking toward camera STORYLINE A mortar barrage hit the main mosque in the Iraqi city of Kufa on Thursday, killing 27 people and wounding 63 others as they prepared to march on the violence-wracked city of Najaf, hospital officials and witnesses said. Thousands of people were crowded around the mosque at the time and ambulances raced to the scene to take scores of wounded to a nearby hospital. Dead bodies lay around the mosque compound, a stronghold of followers of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, witnesses said. Hussam al-Husseini, an al-Sadr aide, said one mortar shell hit the mosque compound itself and two others hit near the mosque gates. Others gave conflicting accounts of the number of explosions. Mohammed AbdelKhadum, an official at al-Furat al-Awsat hospital in Kufa, said 27 people were killed and 63 injured. The morgue overflowed with bodies, and more than a dozen corpses had to be stored in the hospital's garden. Outside the hospital's gate, crowds of angry people gathered, shouting "God is great!". It was unclear who fired the mortars. US forces have battled Shiite followers of al-Sadr in neighbouring Najaf and sporadically in Kufa for three weeks. Following the attack on the mosque, thousands of demonstrators marched on Najaf. They were responding to a call from aides to Iraq's top Shiite leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali Husseini Al-Sistani, to march on the holy city to support his peace bid. Iraq's top Shiite cleric made a dramatic return to Najaf on Thursday aiming to broker a peace deal to end more than three weeks of devastating fighting between US forces and Shiite militants. But just hours before the arrival of al-Sistani's massive convoy, the mortar barrage slammed into a mosque compound in Najaf's sister city, Kufa. You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/youtube/9ac53cca9c07dace460740e9f8675878 Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork