U.S. Troops Go Deep Inside Al-Sadr Stronghold, Violence Continues
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) — Nine Iraqis were killed and 65 others wounded in clashes lasting into Monday morning as U.S. and Iraqi forces took on Shiite militia members in Baghdad’s Sadr City, an Interior Ministry spokesman said.
The latest violence follows days of fierce fighting between U.S. and Iraqi forces and members of the Mehdi Army, a militia loyal to Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
Sadr City is a stronghold for the Mehdi Army from where militants have fired rockets and mortars at the International Zone and American military bases, a military spokesman said.
Monday’s death toll came as The Associated Press reported an aide to al-Sadr said the cleric will heed calls to disband his Mehdi Army if ordered to do so by other leading Shiite clerics.
Twenty people were killed and 52 others wounded Sunday in fighting in Sadr City, the Interior Ministry said, though a U.S. military statement referred to a lower death toll.
It said U.S. and Iraqi forces killed 10 Shiite militants in Sadr City on Sunday, acting after militants fired rocket-propelled grenades at Iraqi soldiers patrolling Sadr City.
Three U.S. soldiers were killed and 31 others wounded in two rocket attacks Sunday afternoon in Baghdad, the U.S. military said.
Sunday’s violence came as Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki demanded al-Sadr disband his Mehdi Army and threatened to bar al-Sadr’s followers from the political process if the cleric refused.
“A decision was taken yesterday that they no longer have a right to participate in the political process or take part in the upcoming elections unless they end the Mehdi Army,” al-Maliki said.
Responding to al-Maliki’s comments, a spokesman for al-Sadr, Sheikh Salah al-Obeidi, said that any effort to bar Sadrists from participation in politics would be unconstitutional — and that any decision to disband the Mehdi Army is not the government’s to make.
“It is up to the side that established it,” he said.
Al-Maliki spoke in an exclusive interview with CNN after a weeklong military offensive against what Iraqi officials called gangs and militia members in the southern Iraqi city of Basra.
Hundreds were killed or wounded in the fighting across Iraq, which reportedly ended when Iranian and Iraqi Shiite officials held talks in Iran with al-Sadr.
Sunday’s American fatalities bring the death toll of U.S. troops in the Iraq war to 4,020; that toll includes eight civilian contractors working for the Pentagon.
An attack involving a “couple of rounds” of fire on the International Zone, also known as the Green Zone, killed two soldiers and wounded 17 others about 3:30 p.m., a military official said, declining to give the specific location of the attack for security reasons.
A separate attack about 30 minutes earlier killed one soldier and wounded 14 at a U.S. military outpost in Rustamiya in southeastern Baghdad, the military said.
