Posted on 11/23/2006 10:34:10 AM PST by Flavius
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Guerrilla fighters attacked an Iraqi government ministry in central Baghdad on Thursday with mortars and machineguns in one of the most dramatic shows of force by militants in the capital since the U.S. invasion.
A deputy minister in the Shi'ite-run Health Ministry and a police source said about 30 unidentified gunmen were involved.
"Terrorists are attacking the building with mortars, machineguns and we can even see snipers. Any employee who leaves the building will be killed," Deputy Health Minister Hakim al-Zamily said from his office. Reuters Pictures Photo
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An Interior Ministry source said gunmen had surrounded the ministry, north of central Baghdad on the mainly Shi'ite eastern bank of the Tigris, and were clashing with Iraqi security forces.
Some casualties had been taken to hospital, he said, and three mortar round landed in the ministry compound.
The source said the gunmen had attempted to break into the ministry compound but had been driven back. Zamily complained that army commanders had not responded to calls for help.
After half an hour, the fighting appeared to have eased.
The Health Ministry, controlled by Shi'ite cleric and militia leader Moqtada al-Sadr, is at the centre of controversy. Zamily survived an assassination attempt this week, when gunmen attacked his convoy and killed two of his bodyguards
A day earlier, fellow Shi'ite deputy minister Ammar al- Saffar was abducted from his home in a nearby Sunni district by men in camouflage uniform. He has not been heard of since.
While the United States says many police and army units are suspected of being loyal to Shi'ite groups, some, particularly in the army, are believed to have links to Sunni leaders.
Sadr's Mehdi Army militia, which has its Baghdad stronghold in the nearby Sadr City slum, is accused by the once dominant Sunni minority of some of the worst death squad killings, in which hundreds of people a week are dying in Baghdad.
The health minister flatly denied a United Nations report on Wednesday that said a record 3,700 civilians died in violence in October. The real figure was about a quarter of that, Ali al-Shimeri said -- an account at odds with data from other sources and with recent statistics from the ministry itself. Reuters Pictures Photo
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SECTARIAN VIOLENCE
Three car bombs and a mortar blast killed at least 10 people and wounded 45 in Sadr City at about the same time as the attack on the Health Ministry, the Interior Ministry source said.
Sectarian passions have flared this month, notably over attacks and kidnaps by men in uniform. Dozens of civil servants were abducted last week from the Sunni-run Higher Education Ministry by suspected Shi'ite militiamen from Sadr City.
Shi'ite leaders denied assertions by the Sunni minister that more than 60 of his staff and visitors were still missing.
Zamily said the ministry was often attacked but Thursday's raid was unusually sustained, with militants apparently trying to forge a safe corridor to link the Sunni enclave of Adhamiya in east Baghdad to the mainly Sunni west bank of the river.
"We called the army commanders to intervene and stop the gunmen from attacking us but we got no reply. There is a big conspiracy by terrorists to separate east and west Baghdad," he said.
Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, due to meet U.S. President George W. Bush in Jordan, has vowed to disband militias loyal to fellow Shi'ite leaders like Sadr, a key ally, but he has resisted pressure from some in Washington to speed that up.
Demands are increasing among U.S. politicians, particularly Bush's Democratic opponents who now control Congress, for troops to start withdrawing next year, whether or not Maliki's national unity government starts to reverse a slide toward civil war.
(Additional reporting by Aseel Kami, Mussab Al-Khairalla, Ahmed Rasheed, Claudia Parsons, Alastair Macdonald and Stuart McDill)
Dog bites man. Yawn.
Correction:
Sadr-run Health Ministry
Thought Gen. Abizaid just said he had "enough troops to control Baghdad...but not outside of Baghdad"
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