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| Tuesday, 6 April 2004 |
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US-led troops battle Shi'ites in Iraq, 30 killed BAGHDAD, Monday (Reuters) Open warfare between U.S.-led forces and radical Shi'ite militiamen left at least nine coalition troops and 21 Iraqis dead, officials said on Monday, raising the spectre of a new front in the Iraq conflict. Ferocious gun battles killed seven American soldiers in Baghdad and more than 20 people near the city of Najaf, posing an unprecedented challenge to occupation forces ignited by their attempts to crack down on a radical Shi'ite faction. Most previous attacks on coalition troops since they occupied Iraq a year ago have been by fighters drawn from Iraq's Sunni Muslim minority rather than majority Shi'ites. In Baghdad's Sadr City slum, Shi'ite militiamen tried to take over police stations and government buildings on Sunday using small arms and grenade launchers, the U.S. military said. "Coalition forces and Iraqi security forces prevented this and reestablished security in Baghdad at the cost of seven U.S. soldiers killed and more than two dozen wounded," a military statement said. At least one Iraqi was reported killed. Spanish-led troops and Iraqi police meanwhile fought a battle with militiamen in Kufa near Najaf that officials said left 20 Iraqis, one American and one Salvadoran soldier dead and 200 Iraqis wounded, after protesting militiamen marched on a Spanish-run military base. As well as in Baghdad, Shi'ite supporters of radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr clashed with troops in several other cities to denounce the arrest of an aide to the cleric and the closure by U.S. officials of a militant newspaper. A senior U.S. military official said the Kufa incident began when Iraqi security forces came under fire. Apache helicopters and fighter planes were called in but did not fire, he said. Witnesses said the demonstrators, many of them armed, had thrown stones at a military vehicle arriving at the base and shortly afterwards Spanish-led troops and Iraqi police at the base had opened fire on the crowd from several directions. Black-clad members of the Mehdi Army, a banned militia loyal to Sadr, returned fire at the garrison for around three hours. A Reuters correspondent said most of the dead wore Mehdi uniforms. Militiamen, some of them teenagers, darted out from an area of workshops and junkyards to fire at the base before running for cover. Sadr, 30, said he would stage a sit-in at a Kufa mosque until his demands were met. "Terrorise your enemy, God will reward you well for what pleases him. It is not possible to remain silent in front of their abuse," his statement said. In the northern city of Kirkuk, a suicide car bomber wounded two U.S. soldiers and five Iraqis at another pro-Sadr protest. Meanwhile the Bush administration may have to consider extending its June 30 deadline for the transfer of sovereignty in Iraq or risk seeing the country lapse into civil war, the head of the U.S. Senate's foreign relations panel said. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard Lugar of Indiana and the panel's ranking Democrat, Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware, said in separate interviews that more troops may be needed to stabilize Iraq amid growing violence including deadly clashes in a Shi'ite section of Baghdad that killed at least nine U.S. soldiers. The lawmakers also chastised the Bush administration for failing to produce a plan to deal with a newly sovereign Iraq, and touted a Biden proposal that would give NATO a major new security role and establish a U.N. commissioner for Iraq who would answer to the U.N. Security Council. |
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