Posted on 04/23/2004 11:58:05 PM PDT by yonif
KARBALA, Iraq - Radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr threatened Friday to unleash suicide bombers if U.S. troops move against him in Iraq's holiest Shiite city, and his militiamen attacked a Bulgarian convoy, killing a soldier.
U.S. forces massed on the outskirts of Najaf have said they have no intention of moving in for the time being to capture al-Sadr - fully aware that an American entry into the holy city would spark a wave of outrage among Iraq's Shiite Muslim majority.
But al-Sadr's comments and the bloody clash in the nearby city of Karbala were a show of defiance amid off-and-on negotiations aimed at trying to resolve the standoff. The Karbala fighting brought the first coalition death in fighting with al-Sadr followers in more than a week.
"Some of the Mujahedeen (holy warrior) brothers have told me they want to carry out martyrdom attacks, but I am postponing this," al-Sadr told thousands of worshippers during his Friday prayer sermon at the main mosque in Kufa, near Najaf.
"When we are forced to do so and when our city and holy sites are attacked, we will all be time bombs in the face of the enemy," he said.
Suicide bombings would be a new tactic for al-Sadr, whose followers launched a bloody revolt in early April, attacking coalition troops across the south. Al-Sadr, however, is known for blustery rhetoric and threats and is under pressure from moderate Shiite clerics to resolve the standoff.
In his sermon, al-Sadr condemned suicide bombings Wednesday in the southern city of Basra because they targeted civilians and Iraqi police. The death toll from those attacks rose to 74, including at least 16 children killed when their school buses were incinerated in the blasts.
Meanwhile, the military said Saturday that a U.S. Marine died of wounds suffered while fighting guerrillas April 14 in Iraq's western Anbar province. The military declined to release the details of the death, other than to say the Marine was a member of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force and died Thursday.
In Basra, police arrested five Iraqis believed linked to al-Qaida and suspected in the bombings. The five men were captured with nearly 25 tons of TNT, and police were looking for another car bomb they suspected was somewhere in the city, said Basra's police intelligence chief, Khalaf al-Badran.
There was no immediate confirmation of the report by coalition officials.
In central Iraq, a U.S. soldier was killed Friday by a roadside bomb near the town of Samarra, the military announced. His death brought to 101 the number of U.S. troops killed in Iraq since the beginning of April. Since March 2003, 709 service-members have died in this country.
Also Friday, the top U.S. administrator in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, announced that the new Iraqi army would begin recruiting former high-level officers from Saddam Hussein's disbanded military - and he eased a ban on former Baath Party members, allowing thousands of teachers and professors to return to work in schools.
While the standoff with al-Sadr is on hold, U.S. commanders repeated warnings that a renewed Marine assault on the central city of Fallujah could come soon unless guerrillas in the city abide by a call to surrender heavy weapons in their arsenals.
For the past two days, only a handful of weapons have been turned in - most of them "junk," according to Marines, including rusted mortar shells and dud rockets.
Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said even fewer weapons were handed over Friday than the day before, and they were "generally of the same low quality."
Kimmitt would not say if there was a deadline for weapons to be surrendered, but added, "Our patience is not eternal. ... We're talking days."
Handing over heavy weapons would be tantamount to surrendering for the city's Sunni guerrillas. They have gone to great lengths to hide their arsenals.
"Unless they're really intimidated and think they're going to lose a future fight - which the Sunni insurgents are not - or unless they think they're going to be part of a future political solution - which they don't - they're going to resist," said Michael O'Hanlon, a military analyst with the Brookings Institution in Washington.
In the Karbala battle, militiamen ambushed a Bulgarian patrol on a main street near the city's golden-domed Imam Abbas Shrine.
After the battle, a military truck was in flames, billowing smoke into the air. Al-Sadr supporters waved a soldier's helmet, chanting,"Yes, yes, al-Sadr! Al-Mahdi's Army will be victorious." A pool of blood was on the ground nearby.
The soldier killed in the Karbala battle was the sixth Bulgarian killed in Iraq.
Bulgaria's Defense Minister Nikolai Svinarov rejected any withdrawal of his country's 480 troops from Iraq. Five Bulgarian lawmakers quickly submitted a request in parliament for the troops' withdrawal by July 10, though the motion appeared sure to fail.
Spain, where opposition to the country's military deployment is high, is withdrawing its 1,300 troops from Iraq, as are Honduras and the Dominican Republic, which work alongside the Spaniards in Najaf.
Al-Sadr has been holed up in his office in Najaf. But for the past two weeks he has moved freely from Najaf to Kufa and back to deliver noon Friday prayers - a sign that U.S. troops may be holding off on capturing him even on the roads between the two cities, which are several miles apart.
Holy Shiite Batman, that's a whole lot of TNT. That has to be a typo, that would be a warehouse full.
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