An al-Sadr militiaman in a bandana symbolising martydom. Moqtada al-Sadr's supporters want the Shia-dominated south to break from the centre and north. Photo: Ghaith Abdul-Ahad/Getty Images
Posted on 08/11/2004 4:42:36 PM PDT by MadIvan
An al-Sadr militiaman in a bandana symbolising martydom. Moqtada al-Sadr's supporters want the Shia-dominated south to break from the centre and north. Photo: Ghaith Abdul-Ahad/Getty Images |
BRITISH troops backed by helicopters and warplanes killed ten Shia militiamen in al-Amarah in southern Iraq in one of the largest offensives yet by the British against the Mahdi Army, which is led by the renegade cleric Hojatoleslam Moqtada al-Sadr.
The coalition and Iraqi troops conducted the attacks on Tuesday night, hitting positions taken up by the rebels in the tribal town 230 miles southeast of Baghdad after a constant stream of attacks by the militia. Two British soldiers were slightly wounded in the operation, which was instigated at the request of local Iraqi security commanders.
“The purpose was to regain control of al-Amarah,” said Squadron Leader Spike Wilson, a British Forces spokesman. “Over the past few days there have been several incidents when (insurgents) targeted our troops and Iraqi police. It got to the situation where it was intolerable to the local government and police,” he said.
The fighting lasted for several hours as British and Iraqi troops battled to push the guerrillas out of their fortified positions. Insurgents armed with rocket grenades and mortars had taken over four police stations at the weekend before being forced out again in a drawn-out conflict that left locals living “under duress”, Squadron Leader Wilson said.
A Mahdi Army spokesman said that another 30 of his fighters had been wounded in the clashes, adding that three civilians were also killed. He said that the British had used tanks supported by US warplanes.
The British declined to give details on the exact make-up of the strike force, but said that aircraft had dropped leaflets on al-Amarah afterwards explaining that the militia violence was damaging the local community.
The British forces pulled back to their bases after dawn and Iraqi police commanders said that they had regained control of the town.
North of al-Amarah, in Kut, two Iraqi soldiers were killed fighting al-Mahdi Army gunmen as militiamen blocked streets and besieged the governor’s office, witnesses said. A spokesman for the provincial administration said that a written death threat had been delivered to the governor for refusing to meet the demands of Hojatoleslam al-Sadr’s supporters that the town be ceded to a separate south, independent of Baghdad.
Supporters of Hojatoleslam al-Sadr have declared that they want the Shia-dominated south to break away from the Sunni and Kurdish centre and north, under the control of the 30-year-old cleric, who is holed up in the Shia holy city of Najaf.
US forces are planning a final attack on his army of gunmen using ancient shrines as a base for attacks, although the sensitivity of the holy places means that they risk inflaming the moderate Shia middle class, who have hitherto largely rejected Hojatoleslam as an upstart.
The Shia militia, mainly fighters from Iraq’s poorest slums, have taken control of a large swath of north Baghdad called Sadr City, after the cleric’s father, a popular ayatollah killed by Saddam Hussein.
In another al-Sadr bastion, the Shia city of al-Nasiriyah in the south, thousands of people demonstrated and shouted condemnation of a fellow Shia, Iyad Allawi, the country’s interim Prime Minister, who has promised to smash the militia but who has invited Hojatoleslam al-Sadr to rejoin the political process.
A senior diplomatic source in Baghdad said yesterday that it was unclear exactly why the rebel cleric was leading the bloody uprising, the second he has instigated in four months.
It was possible he was having to respond to frustration from hardline supporters who reject the presence of foreign troops on Iraqi soil, but may also be receiving encouragement from Iran’s theocratic Shia Government, said the official, who asked not to be named. Iran was “much more aggressive in their activity in Iraq than three months ago”, he added. “And they weren’t exactly passive three months ago.”
The Iraqi interim Government has repeatedly accused Iran, a traditional enemy, of trying to foment trouble across the border. It said that three Iranian secret agents were captured in Najaf, while a shadowy Iraqi guerrilla group abducted an Iranian envoy in Karbala, accusing him of stirring up sectarian hatred.
Iran has certainly poured rhetorical petrol on the flames in Iraq. Yesterday Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader, denounced the US military action in Najaf as “one of the darkest crimes of humanity” and said that Muslims across the world would respond to it.
As fighting continued in the Shia cities of the south, six people were killed by a roadside bomb in a market in Khan Bani Saad, a small town north of Baghdad in the Sunni Triangle, where coalition and Iraqi forces are trying to contain a 14-month insurgency.
Regards, Ivan
Ping!
A lot done, more to do. Sadr should be next.
Thank God for the Brits! Continental Europe makes me sick -- the the Isles are solidly for the West.
Message to the British soldier and Royal Marines: Kill them faster, please.
That stupid picture of the Mahdi dude is supposed to scare us. Real fear was experienced by the idiots who took on the Scots unit in hand to hand fighting.
Message to Brits: Give the poor guy in the picture some Clearasil before you kill him. Thanks
Folks, we are already in an undeclared war with the Iranian mullahs. Now we will see just how strong the students who have been wanting freedom really are.
Re photo, gad, what fanaticism and evil is in that glare.
The question is, how do we keep the Marines from putting one throguh the pretty green headband instead of center mass?
Be this?
This is more like what those terrorists remind me of...........
Crybaby is apt, particulary as it applies to the islamics bellyaching about profiling in the US and UK.
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