| Submit your comments on this article |
| Iraq-Jordan |
| Iraq Coalition Aims to `Destroy’ Rebel Mahdi Army |
| 2004-04-07 |
| The U.S.-led coalition in Iraq aims to ``destroy’’ the Mahdi army of Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr after clashes that left more than 100 Iraqis and 30 U.S. soldiers and Marines dead, U.S. Army Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt said. Coalition forces and followers of al-Sadr have fought the past four days in Baghdad, Najaf, Nassiriyah and other Iraqi cities. Al-Sadr, whose Mahdi army numbers about 3,000, according to the U.S. military, has called for coalition troops to withdraw from the country. U.S. forces, Iraqi police and other coalition soldiers ``are conducting operations to destroy the Mahdi army,’’ Kimmitt said at a Baghdad press conference carried live by Cable News Network. ``These militias that take to violence will become targets.’’ The uprising in the south of Iraq by supporters of al-Sadr, 31, has led to clashes with U.S., British, Italian and other coalition troops. Al-Sadr could put an end to the violence by turning himself in to Iraqi police, Kimmitt said. Al-Sadr is the subject of an arrest warrant in connection with the killing of cleric Abdul Majid al-Khoei last April. The coalition last week closed down a newspaper run by al-Sadr supporters, and arrested one of his aides, Mustafa Yacoubi, also in connection with al-Khoei’s murder. Coalition forces are also fighting militias in areas that are predominantly Sunni Muslim. An Iraqi armed force killed 12 U.S. soldiers west of Baghdad as the U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said coalition forces isolated the city of Fallujah. White House spokesman Scott McClellan confirmed the soldiers were killed in an attack late yesterday. The attack took place near Ramadi, 48 kilometers to the west of Fallujah, when U.S. units were fired on by as many as 70 Iraqis armed with rocket-propelled grenades. At least 30 Iraqis were killed in clashes with U.S. forces in Fallujah. Fallujah and Ramadi are in the so-called Sunni Triangle north and west of Baghdad where most of resistance to the occupation has taken place. Recent attacks have ``put a lot of strain on the resources of the coalition,’’ Adnan Pachachi, an Iraqi Governing Council member, said today on British Broadcasting Corp. radio. A pull out of U.S.-led forces would be a ``disaster’’ because ``there would be absolutely no force that can control the situation.’’ Followers of al-Sadr may have entered the Sunni Muslim region to carry out the attack in Ramadi, AFP cited an unidentified U.S. defense official as saying. ``Moqtada al-Sadr and his movement do not represent the views of the entire Shia population,’’ interim Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari yesterday told reporters at the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London. ``They are a small minority.’’ Other clerics, including Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, spiritual leader of Iraq’s Shiites, ``are keeping their distance from this movement.’’ Iraq’s Shiites, who make up 60 percent of the country’s 25 million people, were prevented from holding power under Saddam Hussein’s Sunni Muslim regime that was ousted in April last year. British troops on Monday negotiated an end to the occupation of the governor’s office in the U.K.-controlled southern city of Basra by Iraqis loyal to al-Sadr. Sistani yesterday called for calm and the restoration of law and order, AFP said, citing Sheikh Abdel Mahdi al-Karbalai, a representative of Sistani. ``We hope to settle this problem peacefully,’’ al-Karbalai said. ``Sadr is an immediate problem that has to be dealt with,’’ U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said in a radio interview yesterday, according to a State Department transcript. ``His army, the Mahdi, has to be dealt with.’’ The U.S. began its operation at Fallujah to search for people involved in last week’s killing of four U.S. civilian guards as their convoy passed through the city. Their bodies were mutilated, dragged and hanged from a bridge by an Iraqi mob. Rumsfeld said yesterday in Norfolk, Virginia that U.S. forces are conducting raids in Fallujah against ``high-value targets’’ and had captured some anti-coalition fighters. U.S. President George W. Bush discussed the Fallujah operation with advisers including Rumsfeld, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Richard Myers, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card, McClellan said late yesterday in a conference call with reporters. McClellan described Bush’s call as ``an update on military operations,’’ and declined to say whether the subject of increasing U.S. forces in Iraq was raised. Rumsfeld said at his briefing he would be open to proposals by commanders in Iraq for more soldiers or equipment, though no plan had yet been sent to Washington. ``At the present time they have not requested a change in their plan,’’ Rumsfeld said at a news conference with North Atlantic Treaty Organization Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer. ``They will decide what they need and they will get what they need.’’ |
| Posted by:Mark Espinola |