Soldiers of Heaven

The Soldiers of Heaven or Jund As-Samaa (Arabic: جند السماء‎‎), were an armed Iraqi Shi'a messianic sect which was led by Dia Abdul Zahra Kadim, who reportedly died in fighting in Basra, Iraq on 29 January 2007.

The group has been described as an apocalyptic Muslim cult and is reported to believe that spreading chaos will hasten the return of the 12th Imam.

A previous leader, Dia Abdul-Zahra, also known as Abu Kamar, claimed to be the Mahdi, a prophet or messiah-like figure in Islam.

The members of the group, which numbered around 1,000, appeared to be mostly poor Shi'a farmers from an agricultural area 19 kilometres northeast of Najaf, but they also seemed to have been heavily armed. In spite of their poverty, the group appeared to have amassed a great deal of wealth.

On January 28, 2007, the group apparently fought a bizarre battle with Iraqi and U.S. forces near Najaf where it is alleged about 200-300 of their members were killed, including its leader, and 300-400 were captured.Asaad Abu Gilel, the governor of Najaf has claimed that members of the group, including women and children, planned to disguise themselves as pilgrims and kill leading Shi'a clerics during the Ashoura holiday.

Significant questions remain regarding the group and the combat effectiveness it displayed, including shooting down an American AH-64 Apache helicopter gunship. Virtually all information about the group and the battle has come from Iraqi officials, who have released incomplete and sometimes contradictory accounts. Iraqi officials, including Najaf deputy governor Abdel Hussein Attan, had claimed that the group had links with al-Qaeda, but given that Sunni jihadists are fiercely anti-Shia, this seemed unlikely.

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