A group of Indian Bohra Muslims who have been in the city throughout the war say the prisoners held at the underground jails of the Baa'th Party's secret service headquarters were killed when the air strike damaged a water tank flooding the cells.

Hundreds of political prisoners may have been killed in the holy city of Karbala when their underground prison was flooded during a coalition air strike.

A group of Indian Bohra Muslims who have been in the city throughout the war say the prisoners were held at the Baa'th Party's secret service headquarters on the outskirts of Karbala.

"We don't know exactly how many prisoners died," Yusuf Ibrahim of Bhindi Bazar in Mumbai told rediff.com. "But we know there were 2,000 prisoners kept by the Baa'th Party in underground cells."

Joozer Saifi, another member of the Bohra community from Khandava in Madhya Pradesh, added, "What we have heard is that one of the coalition air strikes on the prison hit a water main and that flooded the cells, killing everyone inside."

City authorities confirm they have extracted 14 bodies so far from the underground prison cells, but they say it will take several days before they can come up with a final body count.

The cruel and degrading underground imprisonment was one of the trademarks of Saddam's regime. In the nearby city of Nasriya local authorities have freed eight men and an unspecified number of women who were imprisoned in an underground cell for 20 years.

Iraqi human rights activists say they understand that both men and women from these cells have gone totally blind. Some of them have six-inch long fingernails and the women were discovered with ankle length hair.

Ibrahim and Saifi are among four Bohra Muslims in Karbala, the others are called Murtaza and Abdul Hussein, who obeyed the instructions of Bohra community leader Dr Sayedna Mohammed Burhanuddin instructing them to stay where they were and trust in god.

All four have been housed in the Faiz-i-Husseini, a 100-year-old hostel built specially for Indian Muslim pilgrims.

Saddam's repeated crackdowns on Muslim activists meant that the hostel was never as busy as it used to be. Those who visited Karbala on pilgrimage were told to keep their mouths shut and avoid saying anything that could be construed as criticism of the regime.

Karbala is based on the site of a historic battle when Prophet Mohammed's grandsons, Hussein and Hassan, were martyred by Yezid.

Those, including the Bohras, who revere Hussein and Hassan and lament their tragic situation fall on the Shia side of the Sunni-Shia divide within the Islamic world community.

Now that Saddam is gone, the local Bohras are in the forefront of those Muslims in Karbala who feel free to speak their mind about the defunct Baa'thist regime.

"He was worse than the devil," says Ibrahim who commutes twice a year between Mumbai and Karbala. "I am sure even the devil was afraid of him. If we said one word against him, we would be sent straight to prison."

The Indian Bohras are meanwhile supportive of the Karbala city authority's efforts to restore law and order during the forthcoming Arbayeen feast in memory of Hussein's martyrdom.

Karbala is functioning as a semi-independent city-state with its own electricity and water supplies running smoothly. A locally recruited and armed militia patrols the streets and enforces a 12 to five curfew.

Rediff.com Senior Editor Shyam Bhatia is the co-author of Saddam's Bomb, on Iraq's search for nuclear weapons