WORLD / Middle East
U.S. coalition kills 30 Shiite fighters
(AP)
Updated: 2006-10-09 08:48
BAGHDAD, Iraq - The U.S.-led coalition said it killed 30 fighters in a
battle Sunday with the country's most powerful Shiite militia amid
growing American impatience with the Iraqi government's inability to stop
militias responsible for escalating sectarian violence.
Iraqi troops patrol the streets of Diwaniyah, 130 kilometers (80 miles)
south of Baghdad Sunday, Oct. 8, 2006. U.S. and Iraqi troops battled the
country's most powerful Shiite militia, the Mahdi Army, in Diwaniyah
Sunday for several hours. [AP]
The clash was the second with the Mahdi Army in the predominantly Shiite
southern city of Diwaniyah in as many months. Officials from the party of
radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, which heads the militia, denied
any of their fighters were killed.
A U.S. Abrams tank was seriously damaged when it was hit by
rocket-propelled grenades, but no casualties were reported among the U.S.
or Iraqi forces.
However, the military announced the deaths of five U.S. troops elsewhere
in the country. Two soldiers were killed Saturday, one in the capital and
the other northwest of Baghdad while three Marines were killed Friday in
western Anbar province, the military said without elaborating.
The deaths brought to 29 the number of Americans killed in Iraq this
month, many of them in Baghdad as part of a district-by-district
crackdown aimed at reducing mounting violence by clearing the city of
weapons and fighters.
At least 14 Iraqis also died in other violence around the country Sunday,
including a Shiite woman and her young daughter who were killed when
gunmen opened fire on their minivan in Baqouba, northeast of Baghdad. The
driver also was killed, and the woman's husband and her brother were
wounded.
Police also found 51 bullet-riddled bodies in various parts of Baghdad
during a 24-hour period ending Sunday morning, police 1st Lt. Mohammed
Khayoun said. They were all apparent victims of the sectarian death
squads that roam the capital, with many of the bodies showing signs of
torture.
The U.S. has shown increasing impatience with the failure of Shiite Prime
Minister Nouri al-Maliki to rein in militias fueling the Shiite-Sunni
killings that many believe now pose a greater threat to Iraq's stability
than al-Qaida or the anti-U.S. insurgency.
Sunni leaders accuse al-Maliki of hesitating to take action against
Shiite militias because many of them, like the Mahdi Army belong to
political parties that his government relies on for support. Al-Sadr's
party holds 30 of the 275 seats in parliament and five Cabinet posts, and
the cleric's backing helped al-Maliki win the top job earlier this year.
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice gave al-Maliki and other Iraqi
leaders a blunt assessment during a visit to Iraq this past week, telling
them the violence cannot be tolerated and they have to act.
Sen. John Warner, R-Va., chairman of the Armed Services Committee, gave a
starker warning following his own visit to Iraq, saying if violence does
not abate in the next two or three months, Washington should make "bold
decisions" on what to do next.
U.S. troops have been quietly launching raids on key al-Sadr loyalists
and Mahdi Army members in the past week, members of al-Sadr's party have
said. The U.S. has announced numerous arrests during the Baghdad sweep,
but has not specified what group they belong to so exact numbers could
not be determined.
Al-Sadr loyalists, meanwhile, have accused the Americans of trying to
start a wider fight with the militia. U.S. troops and the Mahdi Army
fought major battles twice in 2004.
"The Americans are creating pretexts to provoke us and drag us into
confrontation," said Fadhil Qasir, a spokesman for the Mahdi Army in
Diwaniyah.
The fighting in Diwaniyah, about 80 miles south of Baghdad, broke out
after U.S. and Iraqi troops entered the city looking for Mahdi Army
members responsible for the execution-style killings of 11 Iraqi army
troops in August. The slayings provoked a fierce fight at the time
between the militia and Iraqi forces that left 23 troops and 50
militiamen dead.
Coalition forces raided the house of Kifah al-Greiti, a Mahdi Army
commander, early Sunday, prompting a fierce battle with militiamen that
lasted several hours, Iraqi Army Capt. Fatiq Ayed said. The U.S. military
said up to 10 teams of militiamen with rocket propelled grenades attacked
the Iraqi and U.S. troops.
Later, U.S. troops barricaded off entrances to the area to prevent
militia reinforcements from entering. The military said 30 militiamen
were killed, but Qasir rejected the claim.
The military also said the target of the raid was captured, along with
three other people. However, both police and the militia said al-Greiti
had not been arrested, and it was not immediately clear who the captured
suspect was.
Sheik Abdul-Razzaq al-Nadawi, head of al-Sadr's office in Diwaniyah, said
the movement had negotiated an arrangement with the prime minister's
office that U.S. troops would not enter Mahdi Army neighborhoods in the
city, and that the presence of U.S. troops overnight had provoked the
clashes.
"We don't attack, but when we are attacked, we respond," he said.
Elsewhere, authorities in Kirkuk ended a security sweep aimed at getting
rid of weapons in the northern city, which has seen escalating violence
in past weeks. An all-day curfew imposed Saturday during the crackdown
was lifted.
The troops arrested some 150 suspected insurgents and seized 380 assault
rifles and 200 pistols in the house-to-house searches, police Brig.
Sarhat Qadir said. The sweep began in mainly Kurdish areas in the north
of the city, then moved down into the south and west of the city, where
the Sunni Arab population is centered.
Kirkuk, a major oil center, is at the center of a struggle for power
between Sunni Arabs and ethnic Turkmen and Kurds, who claim the city as
their own and want it eventually to be included in their self-rule
enclave to the north.
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