Sadr Makes Truce Offer - The Associated Press
Baghdad - Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr said Sunday that he was pulling his fighters off the streets nationwide and called on the government to stop raids against his followers and free them from prison.
The Iraqi government quickly welcomed al-Sadr's apparent move to resolve a widening conflict with his movement, sparked Tuesday by operations against his backers in the oil-rich southern city of Basra.
Al-Sadr's nine-point statement was issued by his headquarters in the holy city of Najaf and broadcast through loudspeakers on Shiite mosques. It said the first point was: "taking gunmen off the streets in Basra and elsewhere."
He also demanded that the Iraqi government stop "haphazard raids" and release security detainees who haven't been charged, two issues cited by his movement as reasons for fighting the government.
Followers handed out sweets in Baghdad's main Mahdi Army militia stronghold of Sadr City.
Government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh called the statement "positive and responsible." But he also warned in a telephone interview broadcast on Iraqi state TV. that security forces would continue to target those who don't follow the order.
"We expect a wide response to this call," he said. "After this announcement, anybody who targets the government and its institutions will be regarded ... as outlaws."
Scattered firing could be heard in central Baghdad hours after al-Sadr's statement was released, and rockets or mortars were fired toward the U.S.-protected Green Zone.
At least seven Iraqis were killed and 21 wounded when two rounds apparently fell short, striking houses in the commercial district of Karradah, police said.
A U.S. public address system in the Green Zone warned people to "duck and cover" and to stay away from windows.
Iraqi security forces have been facing fierce resistance to their crackdown on militia violence in the southern city of Basra.
Dozens of Shiite gunmen stormed a state TV facility in central Basra before al-Sadr's declaration Sunday, forcing Iraqi troops guarding the building to flee and setting armored vehicles on fire.
One of al-Maliki's top security officials was killed in a mortar attack against the palace that houses the military operations center, officials said.
The prime minister's Dawa party issued a statement of condolences identifying the slain official as Salim Qassim, known by his nickname Abu Laith al-Kadhimi.
The strength of the resistance to the week-old offensive has taken the U.S.-backed government by surprise, forcing it to come up with a new tactical plan targeting several Mahdi Army strongholds, a government official said.
The official, who was in Basra but spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to release the information, said Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki also had brought in reinforcements and appealed to local tribal leaders to help secure the area.
The prime minister, himself a Shiite, has called the fight "a decisive and final battle" and vowed to remain in Basra until government forces wrest control from militias, including the Mahdi Army that is loyal to radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
But al-Maliki also acknowledged Saturday that he may have miscalculated by failing to foresee the strong backlash the offensive would provoke in Baghdad and other cities where Shiite militias wield power.
Hundreds of militants, soldiers and civilians have been killed as fighting spread to Baghdad neighborhoods and other southern cities.
Several clashes have involved U.S. forces and the U.S. military launched airstrikes in Basra. The military said 16 enemy fighters were killed in when an AC-130 gunship strafed heavily armed militants attacking Iraqi troops during clashes on Saturday.
U.S. and Iraqi troops also repelled an attack against American special forces Saturday in Suwayrah, a Shiite militia stronghold 25 miles south of Baghdad, killing 13 enemy fighters, the military said in a statement.
Iraqi police said three militants were killed and 21 detained when clashes resumed there on Sunday.
In other violence, a suicide car bomber killed five U.S.-backed Sunni fighters and wounded eight other people near the oil hub of Beiji, 155 miles north of Baghdad.
Gunmen also killed five policemen in Duluiyah, a Sunni-dominated area 45 miles north of Baghdad.
The U.S. military said separately that American and Iraqi troops unearthed 14 badly decomposed bodies in a mass grave on Saturday in Muqdadiyah, northeast of Baghdad. It was the second such find since Thursday, when 37 bodies were found.
Associated Press writers Hamid Ahmed and Saad Abdul-Kadir contributed to this article.
Shiite Militias Cling to Swaths of Basra and Stage Raids
By James Glanz and Michael Kamber
The New York Times
Sunday 30 March 2008
Baghdad - Shiite militiamen in Basra openly controlled wide swaths of the city on Saturday and staged increasingly bold raids on Iraqi government forces sent five days ago to wrest control from the gunmen, witnesses said, as Iraqi political leaders grew increasingly critical of the stalled assault.
Witnesses in Basra said members of the most powerful militia in the city, the Mahdi Army, were setting up checkpoints and controlling traffic in many places ringing the central district controlled by some of the 30,000 Iraqi Army and police forces involved in the assault. Fighters were regularly attacking the government forces, then quickly retreating.
Senior members of several political parties said the operation, ordered by Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, had been poorly planned. The growing discontent adds a new level of complication to the American-led effort to demonstrate that the Iraqi government had made strides toward being able to operate a functioning country and keep the peace without thousands of American troops.
Mr. Maliki has staked his reputation on the success of the Basra assault, fulfilling a longstanding American desire for him to boldly take on militias.
But as criticism of the assault has risen, it has brought into question another American benchmark of progress in Iraq: political reconciliation.
Security has suffered as well.
Since the Basra assault began Tuesday, violence has spread to Shiite districts of Baghdad and other places in Iraq where Shiite militiamen hold sway, raising fears that security gains often attributed to a yearlong American troop buildup could be at risk. Any widespread breakdown of a cease-fire called by Moktada al-Sadr, the Shiite cleric who founded the Mahdi Army, could bring the country back to the sectarian violence that strained it in 2006 and 2007.
"We don't have to rush to military solutions," said Nadeem al-Jabiri, a Parliament member from the Fadhila Party, a strong rival of Mr. Sadr's party that would have been expected to back the operation, at least on political grounds. Instead of solving the problems in Basra, Mr. Jabiri said, Mr. Maliki "escalated the situation."
For the third straight day, the American military was reported to be conducting airstrikes in support of Iraqi troops in Basra. Iraqi police officials reported that an American bombing run had killed eight civilians.
The American military did not immediately acknowledge the report. But Maj. Tom Holloway, a British military spokesman, said that the reports were being investigated and that he had no further information.
Major Holloway did say that "coalition air power," meaning American or British jets, dropped two more precision-guided bombs just after noon on Saturday on what was identified as "an enemy stronghold" in Basra. Shortly afterward, British artillery fired on a militia mortar team. The mortar was destroyed, Major Holloway said.
At a news briefing in Basra on Saturday, Iraq's defense minister, Abdul-Kader Jassem al-Obeidi , conceded that the assault had not gone according to expectations. "We were surprised by a very strong resistance that made us change our plans," he said.
In Baghdad, the American military was also drawn deeper into the violence generated by the Basra assault. The military issued a statement saying that American soldiers had killed nine Iraqis that it called terrorists in firefights around Sadr City, the Shiite slum that forms Mr. Sadr's base of support. The statement said seven of the Iraqis were killed after they attacked an American unit, and two more when they were caught placing roadside bombs. Later Saturday, the military announced that two American soldiers had been killed by a roadside bomb in Shiite-controlled eastern Baghdad.
Iraqi Interior Ministry officials said they would extend a strict and citywide curfew indefinitely, in an attempt to keep the streets clear.
Mr. Maliki's forces may also have lost ground in the battle for public opinion when, in a well-publicized event in Sadr City, 40 men who said they were Iraqi police officers surrendered their weapons to Sadr officials, who symbolically gave the officers olive branches and Korans. The weapons were returned after the officers pledged not to use them against Mahdi Army members.
"These weapons are for defending the country but not for fighting your brothers," said Sheik Salman al-Fraji, head of the Sadr office there.
Although a citywide curfew remained in effect in Baghdad, the booms of rockets or mortars were heard in the morning. It was not immediately clear who had fired them or where they landed, although the fortified Green Zone, the nerve center of American and Iraqi governmental operations here, has been a frequent target since the Basra operation began.
Clashes between militias and Iraqi government security forces continued elsewhere. There was intense fighting for a second day north of Basra in Dhi Qar Province and its capital, Nasiriya, where officials said the toll on Saturday was 28 killed and 59 wounded. There were running battles on a main bridge in Nasiriya, an Iraqi police officer said, and gunmen controlled the town of Shatra, about 20 miles north.
There also appeared to be a major operation under way around Baquba, north of Baghdad, where government tanks blocked streets in at least three neighborhoods as troops sought out members of the Mahdi Army.
The Turkish military said Saturday that it had killed 15 Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq on Thursday using long-range land weapons, Reuters reported.
In Basra, mortar shells rained down in the late afternoon on the area of the Presidential Palace and the Shatt al Arab hotel, where the assault has its operations center. Groups of 10 to 12 militia members set up a dense net of checkpoints throughout the northern and western parts of the city, carrying out raids on remaining areas in the city center still controlled by government forces.
The government set up an Army recruitment center in the center of Basra. But anyone heading in that direction was stopped by Mahdi Army members, who questioned whether they were "Hakim's people," loyalists of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, whose armed wing, the Badr Organization, is a prime rival of the Mahdi Army on the streets of Basra. Few people were seen in front of the recruitment center itself.
"Unfortunately we were expecting one thing but we saw something else," said Ali Hussam, 48, a teacher, who said that after Saddam Hussein the people of Basra had hoped for peace. "But unfortunately with the presence of this new government and this democracy that was brought to us by the invader, it made us kill each other."
"And the war is now between us," he said.
Reporting was contributed by Qais Mizher, Ahmad Fadam, Mudafer al-Husaini, Hosham Hussein and other Iraqi employees of The New York Times in Baghdad, Basra, Nasiriya and Diyala Province.
www.truthout.org/docs_2006/033008A.shtml