ROUGH CUT (NO REPORTER NARRATION)<br/> <br />STORY: Hundreds of mourners gathered in the southern Iraqi province of Basra on Monday for the funeral of a Shi'ite militant killed in fighting in Syria while defending the famed Sayyida Zeinab shrine in Damascus.<br/> <br />As mourners carried the coffin through the streets, others waved banners and fired into the air.<br/> <br />Iraqi Shi'ite militants said in April that volunteers are crossing into Syria to fight, often alongside Assad's troops, or to protect the Sayyida Zeinab shrine on the outskirts of Damascus, a particularly holy place for Shi'ites.<br/> <br />But militia leaders, who have mostly been inactive since U.S. troops left Iraq a year ago, have been reluctant to openly acknowledge fighting in Syria, possibly because influential Shi'ite clergy opposed Iraqis joining the battle.<br/> <br />Some militants have said they were fighting in Syria in response to their religious leader, Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, but without any official s
