Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki on Wednesday gave Shi’ite fighters in the southern province of Maysan a seven-day deadline to surrender.
Iraqi police and soldiers swept house to house through the southern city of Amara on Thursday in a new crackdown on Shi’ite fighters.
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.
The movement of radical Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr said on Saturday it had struck a deal with the Iraqi government to end fighting in its Baghdad stronghold of Sadr City. Sheikh Salah al-Obeidi, the spokesperson for the cleric’s office in the central shrine city of Najaf, said the deal will be effective from Sunday.
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.
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.
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.
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 United States-led war on Iraq that toppled the brutal regime of dictator Saddam Hussein entered its sixth year on Thursday with millions of Iraqis still battling daily chaos and rampant bloodshed. On March 20 2003, US planes dropped the first bombs on Baghdad.
At least 23 people were killed in bomb attacks and shootings around Iraq on Monday as United States troops announced the discovery of a mass grave with the bodies of 14 men bound and shot in the head. The deadliest attacks were in Baghdad, where at least 19 people were killed in two car bombings.