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| Wednesday, 7 April 2004 |
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US mulls sending more troops to Iraq as Shiite cleric sought for murder BAGHDAD, Tuesday (AFP) The US military has begun considering possible reinforcements in Iraq, as the US-led coalition announced that radical Shiite leader Moqtada Sadr, blamed for inciting violence last weekend, is wanted for murder. More than 50 people have been killed in fighting with Sadr supporters known as the Mehdi Army militia, mainly in southern Iraq. In central Iraq, US Marines on Monday launched a long-awaited offensive against the Sunni Muslim insurgency in the town of Fallujah, a hotbed of support of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. One Marine was killed as his comrades kicked off Operation Vigilant Resolve to hunt down the insurgents that slaughtered four US contractors in Fallujah last week. Marines slapped an 11-hour night curfew on the city as patrols blared messages telling people not to leave their homes. And yet another threat - Jordanian Mussab al-Zarqawi, the alleged leader of a network linked to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda and believed responsible for several terror attacks in Iraq - threatened US-led forces in a recording broadcast Monday on a radical Islamist website. In the message said to have originated from inside Iraq, Zarqawi claimed that his "heroic Mujahedin have killed more than 200 soldiers from the coalition of the crusaders." But the Marine operation and Zarqawi's alleged threats were overshadowed by the running battle with Sadr's radical Shiite followers. Iraq's majority Shiites initially welcomed US-led coalition forces after decades of vicious rule by Saddam's Sunni-dominated regime. The wave of Shiite radical violence has now raised serious alarm for coalition troops, already burdened by a Sunni insurgency. A full revolt among the country's 15 million-plus Shiites would spell disaster. A coalition spokesman revealed Monday an arrest warrant against Sadr for the murder of a rival cleric, Abdel Majid al-Khoei, last April, days after the fall of Saddam. Sadr is currently barricaded in a mosque in the Shiite shrine city of Kufa, and his aides vowed that he would never be captured. The coalition's deputy director of operations, Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, promised Sadr would be treated with respect if he surrendered, despite the deaths of one Salvadoran and eight US soldiers in clashes with his illegal Mehdi Army militia Sunday. "A lot will depend on how he intends to face the news whether he decides to come peacefully," Kimmitt said. On Monday Apache helicopters fired on Sadr's militiamen during fierce battles in the western Baghdad district of Al-Showla, an AFP correspondent on the scene said. The fighting erupted when American soldiers and US-trained Iraqi Civil Defense Corps personnel tried to enter the district. The fighting was the worst to erupt in Baghdad since US troops entered the capital last April. Sadr's followers in southern Iraq seized government buildings and holy shrines in defiance of US threats and calls for calm from more moderate Shiite leaders. In the British-controlled city of Basra, Mehdi Army militiamen stormed the governor's office at dawn Monday, raising a green Islamic flag on the roof, an AFP correspondent said. Two people were wounded as the militiamen traded fire with British troops during the afternoon. In the United States, President George W. Bush vowed not to let the unrest undermine US efforts to establish democracy in Iraq, insisting that June 30 remains the target date for the transfer of sovereignty to an interim administration in Baghdad. "We will not be shaken by the thugs and terrorists," Bush said in a speech on the presidential campaign trail in the southern city of Charlotte, North Carolina. "These killers don't have values." |
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