Radical Cleric Defiant As Iraq Fighting Rages On

BAGHDAD (CNN) — Radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr has rejected the Iraqi prime minister’s calls for his militia to stop fighting Iraqi security forces and lay down their arms, a top al-Sadr aide said Saturday.

“Muqtada Sadr has told us not to surrender our arms except to a state that can throw out the occupation,” Sheik Salah al-Obaidi said.

The message of defiance came as U.S. and coalition troops lent more firepower to Iraqi military and police forces battling Shiite militants in southern Iraq and Baghdad.

The unrest also prompted officials to extend a curfew in the capital.

The fighting involves government security forces and Shiite militia fighters, many of them al-Sadr followers.

The violence has sparked fears that a seven-month cease-fire by al-Sadr’s Mehdi Army — regarded as a key factor in a dramatic drop in attacks in recent months — could collapse or that the U.S. military will have to bail out the Iraqis.

U.S. planes dropped two bombs Saturday afternoon on a suspected Shiite militia stronghold in the Basra area, a British military spokesman said.

“Shortly after two U.S. jets raised ordnance against Shiite militia positions in Basra, UK artillery engaged an enemy mortar team in the Basra area,” said the spokesman, Maj. Tom Holloway.

He said both attacks were in response to requests by Iraqi forces for air support, and the military is still assessing the effect of the bombings.

The U.S. military said Saturday that it was investigating reports that a coalition warplane fired on a home in western Basra and killed several civilians.

Also Saturday, the British fired artillery rounds into Basra from their base at the airport for the first time since the start of the unrest Tuesday.

Dozens of people have been killed in the turmoil, but accurate death tolls have been hard to come by. An official with Iraq’s Defense Ministry said that at least 120 insurgents have died and 240 wounded in Basra since the fighting began.

The Red Crescent in Basra put the number of wounded at 350. Dozens of people had been killed as of Thursday in the Shiite cities of Hilla, Kut and Diwaniya, authorities said.

In the Shiite neighborhood of Sadr City in Baghdad, the number of deaths stood at 75 as of Saturday morning, Iraqi officials said.

Late Saturday, Iraqi officials indefinitely extended the curfew in Baghdad that was imposed Thursday in an effort to quell the violence. The curfew had been set to end Sunday morning.

Al-Sadr’s top aide said the cleric has asked Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to leave Basra and let tribal leaders and political parties resolve the security problems through peaceful dialogue.

But al-Maliki vowed not to leave the southern port city “until security is restored.”

The prime minister, who is personally overseeing operations in the southern city, met Saturday in Basra with the area’s leaders, who have expressed support for the government’s efforts to “impose law and save Basra from criminal gangs,” according to a written statement from the prime minister’s office.

In discussing the crisis with the group, al-Maliki said, “We have tried to find solutions to the problem in Basra … but we found out that the solution did not satisfy some of Saddam’s [Hussein] loyalists and other regional foreign forces, and those are working to destabilize Iraq.

“Those are working to abort the modern Iraqi experiment,” he said. Security forces went to Basra to fight “murder and smuggling gangs and outlaws,’ he said, and hadn’t intended to fight certain groups — apparently referring to the Mehdi Army, al-Sadr’s militia.

This week, President Bush called the current clashes a “defining moment” for Iraq and a key test for the country’s government.

But several U.S. officials said Friday that the Iraqi military push is not going as well as American officials had hoped. A U.S. military intelligence analysis found that Iraqi security forces control less than a quarter of Basra, officials in both the United States and Iraq said.

“This is going to go on for a while,” one U.S. military official said.

Basra’s police units are deeply infiltrated by members of the Mehdi Army. Meanwhile, the fighting has taken a toll on some Iraqi security forces.

At least 40 national police have turned in their uniforms and joined the Mehdi Army, taking their U.S.-supplied weapons with them, according to an Iraqi Interior Ministry official.

Mortar and rocket attacks were directed Saturday at Baghdad’s fortified International Zone, also known as the Green Zone, where Iraqi government buildings and embassies are located. No injuries were reported, a U.S. Embassy spokesman said.

Basra, Iraq’s chief oil port and second-largest city, has been the focus of a turf war between the Mehdi Army and two rival Shiite factions: Abdel Aziz al-Hakim’s Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq and the smaller Fadhila party.