United States and Iraqi troops mounted two raids in Baghdad on Sunday arresting more than 40 interior ministry guards at a secret prison and killing around 20 gunmen in an assault on a mosque loyal to the radical Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.
The sudden strikes seemed to put muscle behind a strong warning from the US ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, on Saturday that militias must be brought under control. They had become a bigger threat to Iraq than the insurgency, he said.
”More Iraqis are dying from the militia violence than from the terrorists. The militias need to be under control,” he said during a visit to a Baghdad youth centre that had been renovated with US aid.
Sunday’s raids saw US-backed Iraqi special forces exchange fire at a mosque in eastern Baghdad. Iraqi police said 22 died, while the US military said 16 ”insurgents” were killed by Iraqi special forces, with US troops on the scene as back-up. ”No mosques were entered or damaged during this operation,” the US military said in a statement.
”As elements of the 1st Iraqi Special Operations Forces Brigade entered their objective, they came under fire. In the ensuing exchange of fire … [Iraqi troops] killed 16 insurgents. As they secured their objective, they detained 15 more individuals,” the statement said.
An Iraqi police lieutenant, Hassan Hamoud, put the death toll at 22, with eight wounded. He said some casualties were at the Shia Dawa party office near the mosque. A senior al-Sadr aide accused US troops of killing more than 20 unarmed worshippers at the Mustapha mosque in cold blood. He denied that they were Mehdi army gunmen. ”The American forces went into the mosque at prayers and killed more than 20 worshippers,” Hazin al-Araji said. ”They tied them up and shot them.”
In a separate operation, US forces found a secret prison, the third discovered by the coalition since last year, holding 17 foreign detainees.
Their identity was not disclosed, but they are probably suspected insurgents from other Arab countries. New signs of sectarian violence emerged yesterday when Iraqi troops discovered 30 bodies, most of which had been beheaded, near a mixed Sunni and Shia town which has been the scene of severe sectarian tension. Iraqi officials said the corpses were discovered on the main road in the village of Mulla Eed, near Baquba, 64km north-east of Baghdad. It is not yet known what their sectarian identity was.
In recent weeks, Khalilzad has frequently called for the replacement of Bayan Jabr, the interior minister, who is accused by many Iraqis of recruiting hundreds of Islamist militiamen from his own party’s Badr brigade into the police, and turning law enforcement into a partisan Shia vendetta against Sunnis.
More than 1 000 people have been abducted and murdered, or shot in drive-by killings, since the destruction of the golden-domed shrine at Samarra last month.
The murders have roused fears of an imminent civil war since the motives appeared to be sectarian, with bands of Shia militiamen going into Sunni areas to abduct people while Sunnis respond by targeting Shias.
Explainer: Militias
Two principal Shia militias have become increasingly powerful in the post-war Iraq, posing more and more of a problem to reconstruction than the insurgents, according to the US ambassador to Baghdad, Zalmay Khalilzad.
The Badr brigade, the armed wing of the biggest Islamist party, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, was formed during Sciri’s 20-year exile in Iran during the Saddan Hussein era. Financed and armed by Iran, it conducted small hit-and-run attacks against Saddam’s regime. It has grown since 2003 and many members have joined the official Iraqi police, now that a Sciri officials heads the interior ministry.
The second main militia is the Mehdi army, loyal to the radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who is based in Najaf. Made up mainly of jobless youth and led by 30 or so clerics, it was formed in April 2004. It fought the Americans in the large Shia district of Baghdad known as Sadr City in April 2004, and in Najaf in August 2004. – Guardian Unlimited Â