Saudi paper Al Wattan reported Sunday that 30 senior commanders and officers in the Mahdi Army, a Shi'ite organization which was responsible for many attacks against Sunni Muslims and US forces in Iraq, were murdered recently.
According to the report, the men were killed by unknown assailants that entered their homes.
A source close to Muqtada al-Sadr, a hardline Shi'ite Iraqi cleric and the head of the Mahdis, told the paper that Mahdi officials who managed to escape their colleagues' fates have fled Damascus en route to Iran.
The Jerusalem Post could not verify Al Wattan's report.
