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Posted on 03/27/2008 8:23:00 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
BAGHDAD (AP) - The Baghdad military command has clamped a weekend curfew on the capital in a bid to stem fierce fighting between Shiite militiamen and security forces.
An official with the command says no unauthorized vehicles, motorcycles or pedestrian traffic will be allowed on the streets from 11 p.m. Thursday to 5 a.m. Sunday.
The move comes as anger mounts among followers of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr over a government crackdown against his Mahdi Army militia in the southern oil port of Basra.
The security operations have sparked protests and deadly clashes in Baghdad and across the Shiite southern heartland.
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Earlier Thursday, Iraq's prime minister vowed Thursday to fight "until the end" against Shiite militias in Basra despite protests by tens of thousands of followers of a radical cleric in Baghdad and deadly clashes across the capital and the oil-rich south.
Mounting anger focused on Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who is personally overseeing operations against the militias dominated by Muqtada al-Sadr's supporters amid a violent power struggle in Basra, Iraq's southern oil hub.
The Iraqi leader made his pledge to tribal leaders in the Basra area as military operations continued for a fourth day with stiff resistance.
"We have made up our minds to enter this battle and we will continue until the end. No retreat," he said in a speech broadcast on Iraqi state TV.
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Sadrist lawmakers in Baghdad issued a strongly worded statement demanding a halt to the military operations and appealing to Iraqi security forces to stand down.
"We call on our brothers in the Iraqi army and the brave national police not to be tools of death in the hands of the new dictatorship," Sadrist lawmaker Falah Shanshal said.
The crisis was seen as a test of the Iraqi government's ability to eventually take over its own security. The U.S.-led coalition has a minimal presence in Basra after British forces turned over responsibility for the area to the Iraqis in late December.
Demonstrators in the northern Baghdad neighborhood of Kazimiyah called al-Maliki a "new dictator" as they carried a coffin bearing a crossed-out picture of the U.S.-backed prime minister, who belongs to a rival political party. A sea of people also rallied in Sadr City, Baghdad's main Shiite district.
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One American was killed in Thursday's attacks, a government employee whose identity was being withheld pending notification of the person's relatives, U.S. Embassy spokeswoman Mirembe Nantongo said.
The military said a U.S. soldier, two American civilians and an Iraqi soldier were wounded in a volley the day before. An American financial analyst was killed Sunday in attacks on the Green Zone.
Meanwhile, gunmen kidnapped an Iraqi civilian spokesman for Baghdad security operations Thursday and killed three of his bodyguards after torching his house in a Mahdi Army stronghold in the capital.
The attack targeted Tahseen Sheikhly, a Sunni who often appeared with U.S. military and embassy officials at news conferences to tout the successes of the crackdown on sectarian violence that began in February 2007.
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They have accused rival Shiite parties, which control Iraqi security forces, of engineering the arrests to prevent them from mounting an effective campaign after the Iraqi parliament agreed in February to hold provincial elections by the fall.
U.S. commanders have insisted the fight is being led by the Iraqi government and was not against al-Sadr's movement but breakaway factions believed to be funded and trained by Iran, which has denied the allegations.
Al-Maliki has warned gunmen in Basra to surrender their weapons by Friday or face harsher measures.
Despite the ultimatum, heavy gunfire and explosions resounded across Basra while helicopters and jet fighters buzzed overhead. The city's police chief escaped an assassination attempt late Thursday but three of his guards were killed in the roadside bombing.
Government troops have faced stiff resistance in neighborhoods controlled by the Mahdi Army in Basra, Iraq's second-largest city, 340 miles southeast of Baghdad. Residents spoke of militiamen using mortar shells, sniper fire, roadside bombs and rocket-propelled grenades to fight off security forces.
A Pentagon official said Wednesday that reports from the Basra area indicate that militiamen had overrun a number of police stations. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
Street battles that started Tuesday in Basra and Sadr City have spread to several other neighborhoods and southern cities, leaving more than 200 dead, including civilians, Iraqi troops and militants. That three-day figure was a rough estimate provided by police and hospital officials who could not give a more specific breakdown.
Iraqi officials reported 17 more people killed in overnight clashes in Sadr City, raising the total there to 40.
The death toll in the Shiite city of Hillah, 60 miles south of Baghdad, also rose to at least 60 in fighting that continued into Thursday, according to a senior police official who asked not to be identified because of security concerns.
The U.S. military said four suspected Shiite extremists were killed in an airstrike but it had no further details.
The police chief in Kut, Abdul-Hanin al-Amara said 40 gunmen had been killed and 75 others wounded in that southeastern city.
A bomb struck an oil pipeline Thursday in Basra, a local oil official said, declining to be identified because he was not authorized to release the information.
Iraqi Oil Minister Hussein al-Shahristani, however, sought to assure international oil companies. The security situation in Basra "is still unstable ... but this has not reflected negatively (on) works at oil output and export installations," al-Shahristani told the U.S.-funded Radio Sawa.
In other violence reported by police, a booby-trapped car exploded near the Iraqi Red Crescent Society's offices in Baghdad, killing two civilians and wounding five.
Gunmen also killed a U.S.-allied Sunni fighter and wounded his wife and daughter after storming his house in the northern city of Samarra late Wednesday.
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Associated Press writers Sinan Salaheddin and Hamid Ahmed contributed to this report.
News ping!
You know what ticks me off? Lots of good things have happened in Iraq since the surge started last years - but that didn’t make the news. Now that Basra is in turmoil, that’s news!
I mean no offense to you, Ernest, who brought this to the board. I’ve seen it all over the news. It’s heartbreaking.
Well, as far as I am concerned ...they have an Agenda.....
This is being propagandized as a "crisis", that the "U.S.led Iraqi puppet regime" is strong arming the valiant warriors of the Mahdi army who just want a political voice.
The AP stinks.
This isn't a crisis, this is a critical operation by the Iraqi government to assert control over Basra, break the militia Mahdi army, interdict Iranian infiltration, prove the training of the security forces and move the U.S. one day closer to getting out of there.
Well said.
I wish you worked for the AP.
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On Thursday the heavily-fortified Green Zone in the heart of the Iraqi capital again came under rocket and mortar fire.
More than 130 Iraqis are reported to have died in three days of heavy fighting, with hundreds more injured.
One American was killed in the Thursday's attacks on the Green Zone – the second to die this week.
Your Views
On Friday the Iraqi parliament is due to hold an emergency session to discuss ways to end the violence.
Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister, has based himself in Basra to personally oversee military operations in the city and has said there will be "no retreat" against the Shia militias.
The city saw a third straight day of fighting on Thursday despite al-Maliki's deadline for fighters to surrender by Friday or face "severe penalties".
Few journalists have been able to travel to the city, but reports say Basra's streets were deserted with shops and businesses shut.
In depth
Video
Ceasefire under pressure
"We have made up our minds to enter this battle, and we will continue until the end," the prime minister said in a speech broadcast on state TV.
He said Iraq had become a "nation of gangs, militias and outlaws" and he was undertaking an "historic mission" in Basra to restore "the law of the land".
The crackdown in Basra is seen as a key test for al-Maliki, with the ability of Iraq's leaders and armed forces to control such situations central to US hopes of pulling its own forces out of the country.
Before the current unrest, Basra had become the battlefield for a turf war between the Mahdi Army and two rival Shia factions - the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council (SIIC) of Abdel Aziz al-Hakim and the smaller Fadhila party.
Thousands of protesters marched through
Baghdad's Sadr City in support of al-Sadr [AFP]
The three factions are fighting to control the huge oil revenues generated in the province, which was transferred to Iraqi control by the British military in December.
Al Jazeera correspondent James Bays, reporting from Baghdad, said the Iraqi leader wanted to be seen putting his stamp on the operation.
"Al-Maliki wants to show that he is in control," he said, "because in the past, he was seen as a weak, impotent leader."
'Bold decision'
At a speech in Ohio on Thursday George Bush, the US president, praised al-Maliki for launching a "tough battle against militia fighters and criminals" in Basra, citing it as evidence that Baghdad is increasingly able to handle security without US leadership.
Bush's speech at the of the US Air Force museum in Dayton is one of a series of addresses made in defence of the five-year-old war in Iraq, and intended to prove that the so-called troop "surge" is having an effect.
"Some members of Congress decided the best way to encourage progress in Baghdad was to criticize and threaten Iraq's leaders while they're trying to work out their differences," he said.
"But hectoring was not what the Iraqi leaders needed," Bush said, adding that what the Iraqis needed was security "and that is what the surge has provided."
The crackdown is seen as a key test for
al-Maliki and the Iraqi military [AFP]
Rejecting suggestions that Iraq's leaders were "foot dragging", he said they were "striving to build a modern democracy on the rubble of three decades of tyranny."
Praising what he said was al-Maliki's "bold decision" to take on the Basra militias, he said the move was a turning point in showing that Iraq is taking on more responsibility.
"There's a strong commitment by the central government of Iraq to say that no one is above the law," Bush said
Critics in the US congress however say Bush is painting a far too rosy picture of the situation in Iraq.
"The president asserts that real progress has been made in Iraq. But if that were truly the case, our troops would be coming home soon," said Harry Reid, the Democrat majority leader in the US senate.
Protests
On Thursday thousands of al-Sadr's supporters joined protest marches in Baghdad, calling on the Iraqi prime minister to resign.
In the neighbourhood of Kazimiyah, protesters denounced al-Maliki as a "new dictator" as they carried a coffin bearing a crossed-out picture of the US-backed prime minister.
Protests also took place in the mainly Shia district of Sadr City.
Al-Sadr himself released a statement on Thursday calling Thursday for a political solution to the growing crisis and an end to the "shedding of Iraqi blood."
But the statement, released by a close aide, stopped short of ordering the Mahdi Army to halt fighting.
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