Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki on Wednesday gave Shi’ite fighters in the southern province of Maysan a seven-day deadline to surrender.
Iraq’s hard-line Shi’ite leader, Moqtada al-Sadr, said on Friday he plans to form a new wing of his powerful movement to battle United States forces.
More than 900 people have been killed in clashes between militiamen and security forces in Baghdad’s Sadr City, which broke out last month, a senior Iraqi official told reporters on Wednesday. ”There were 925 martyrs in Sadr City and 2 605 others have been wounded”, said Tehseen Sheikhly, a spokesperson for the government’s Baghdad security plan.
The United States military said on Monday it had killed 22 fighters who attacked an Iraqi checkpoint in north-eastern Baghdad under cover of an overnight dust storm. The attack was one of the biggest in weeks, and indicated some fighters had defied an order by Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr to observe a ceasefire.
Militants bombarded Baghdad’s Green Zone with rockets on Sunday, taking advantage of the cover of a blinding dust storm to launch one of the heaviest strikes in weeks on the fortified compound. The strikes appeared to defy a renewed call for a ceasefire by Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, which has seen many of his masked gunmen leave the streets of the Sadr City slum.
Iraqi Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr pulled back from confrontation with the government on Friday, asking his followers to continue to observe a shaky ceasefire and not to battle government troops. Sadr said his recent threat of ”open war” was directed only at United States forces, not the Iraqi government.
Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr on Saturday threatened an ”open war” against the Iraqi government unless it halted a crackdown by Iraqi and United States security forces on his followers. The spectre of a full-scale uprising by Sadr sharply raises the stakes in his confrontation with Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.
United States and Iraqi forces killed 13 gunmen in clashes and air strikes overnight in the Baghdad stronghold of cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who said the US would remain his enemy until the ”last drop of my blood”. Authorities eased a blockade on Saturday in the Sadr City district of eastern Baghdad that had trapped residents in the slum for two weeks.
President George Bush on Thursday announced a suspension of United States troop withdrawals from Iraq this summer to allow the military to reassess the security situation. The announcement came amid a spike in violence in Iraq in recent weeks.
United States air strikes killed 10 people in the eastern Baghdad militia stronghold of Sadr City, Iraqi police said on Thursday, but street fighting eased after four days of clashes that have killed close to 90 people. The Sadr City slum has since Sunday been the focal point of battles between black-masked Mehdi Army militiamen and security forces.
Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr threatened on Tuesday to end a truce he imposed on his militia last year, raising the prospect of worsening violence in Iraq just hours before top US officials testified on Iraq in Washington. Al-Sadr urged his Mehdi Army to ”continue your jihad and resistance” against US forces.
Fierce fighting raged on Tuesday as United States and Iraqi forces battled heavily armed Shi’ite militiamen in their Baghdad bastion of Sadr City for a third straight day, a correspondent and witnesses said. They said fierce clashes erupted soon after midnight as American tanks attempted to push into Sadr City.
Iraqi Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr will consult senior religious leaders and disband his Mehdi Army militia if they instruct him to, a senior aide said on Monday. The surprise announcement was the first time Sadr has proposed dissolving the Mehdi Army, one of the principle actors in Iraq’s five-year-old conflict.
Iraq’s prime minister has raised the stakes in his showdown with followers of Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, saying in an interview broadcast on Monday they would be barred from elections unless their militia disbanded. The comments followed raids on Sunday by security forces into the cleric’s Baghdad stronghold, the slum of Sadr City.
Clashes between militiamen and United States forces in the Iraqi capital’s Shi’ite bastion of Sadr City killed at least 20 people and wounded 52 others on Sunday, Iraqi security and medical officials said. Officials from Iraq’s security and defence ministries said women and children were among the dead and wounded.
Gunmen kidnapped 42 university students near the northern Iraqi city of Mosul on Sunday, police said, in one of the biggest mass abductions in the country in many months. ”Gunmen stopped two buses in a village south of Mosul,” said Khalid Abdul-Sattar, police spokesperson for Nineveh province. The group was freed hours after being kidnapped.
The number of Iraqis killed in March climbed to 1 082, mostly civilians, the highest monthly figure since August, amid a spike in violence driven by clashes between Shi’ite militiamen and security forces, officials said on Tuesday. The figure confirms a reversal of the trend of gradually decreasing violence since June.
United States air strikes and military assaults have killed 41 ”criminals” in Baghdad, including 25 who died when an alleged mortar team was bombed, the US military announced on Monday. The killings occurred on Sunday in eastern and north-eastern Baghdad where US and Iraqi forces have been battling the Mehdi Army militia
The United States confirmed on Sunday that US special forces units were operating alongside Iraqi government troops in Basra, where the government is battling militants loyal to Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. The Iraqi special forces team killed four suspected militants in a house and two on a roof before calling in an air strike.
United States forces were drawn deeper into Iraq’s four day-old crackdown on Shi’ite militants on Friday, launching air strikes in Basra for the first time and battling militants in Baghdad. The fighting has exposed a rift within the majority Shi’ite community and put pressure on Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.
Followers of radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr staged noisy protests on Thursday against a crackdown on Shi’ite fighters in Basra as the southern oil hub was rocked by a third straight day of fighting. Demonstrations were held in Sadr City and Kadhimiyah, two Baghdad bastions of Sadr’s Mehdi Army militia.
Iraq’s Prime Minister, Nuri al-Maliki, on Wednesday gave Shi’ite militia and other gunmen a 72-hour deadline to surrender their weapons as his forces engaged in fierce street battles in the southern city of Basra for the second day running. The violence in Basra and Baghdad has killed more than 70 people, according to Iraqi officials and news agency reports.
Iraqi security forces fought raging battles with gunmen from radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr’s Shi’ite militia in Basra on Tuesday amid a crackdown on armed groups in the southern city. British military officials said Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki was in Basra to personally oversee the major security force sweep in Iraq’s second largest city.
The number of United States soldiers to die in Iraq has reached 4Â 000, the US military said on Monday, just days after the fifth anniversary of a war that President George Bush says the US is on track to win. The US military said in a statement four soldiers were killed late on Sunday by a roadside bomb.
One of Iraqi Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr’s senior aides ordered his Mehdi Army militiamen on Thursday to observe a ceasefire after they clashed with United States soldiers in the southern city of Kut. Mehdi Army militiamen battled Iraqi and US forces on Tuesday in clashes that police said killed 11 people.
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/ 13 February 2008
Negotiators have struck a deal to release two CBS News journalists missing, believed kidnapped, in Iraq and they could be free in hours, a leading Shi’ite militia group and the United States military said on Wednesday. Police in Basra said the men, a British journalist and an interpreter, were seized from a city centre hotel.
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/ 21 January 2008
The United States military said on Sunday there had been a dramatic drop in the number of Iranian weapons being used in Iraq but no let-up in Tehran’s training and financing of Iraqi militias. Washington has accused Tehran of supplying Shi’ite militias in Iraq with sophisticated weapons, including armour-piercing bombs.
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/ 21 October 2007
United States forces killed 49 ”criminals” in fierce fighting with militants in Baghdad’s Shi’ite stronghold of Sadr City on Sunday during a raid targeting an Iranian-linked insurgent. Medics at four hospitals confirmed 17 dead, including a boy and a girl, but US military spokesperson Major Winfield Danielson said there were no civilian casualties and no reports of American losses.
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/ 21 October 2007
United States air strikes killed at least 13 people and wounded 52 early on Sunday in the north-eastern Baghdad district of Sadr city, a stronghold for Shi’ite militants, police sources said. The US military said it was ”targeting criminals believed to be responsible for the kidnapping of coalition soldiers in November 2006 and May 2007”.
A United States air strike killed about 25 suspected Iraqi militants linked to Iranian-backed Shi’ite militias on Friday and another 12 al-Qaeda fighters were killed in separate raids, the US military said. US troops said they were engaged in a heavy firefight west of Baquba, capital of volatile Diyala province north of Baghdad, during a dawn raid.
The Iraqi government has called on armed groups to follow the lead of the biggest Shi’ite militia and freeze their operations, even as the United States military on Friday reported the deaths of two more American service members in fighting against Sunni insurgents.
Iraq’s radical Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr on Wednesday ordered his Mehdi Army militia to suspend its activities for six months in a bid to reorganise the militant group. ”I direct the Mehdi Army to suspend all its activities for six months until it is restructured in a way that helps honour the principles for which it is formed,” Sadr said in a statement.