 NAJAF, Iraq - A top aide and three supporters of Shia radical leader Moqtada Sadr were arrested in a pre-dawn swoop by US and Iraqi forces in the Shia holy city of Najaf Thursday, as part of a nationwide crackdown on sectarian violence. Salah Al Obeidi, a close colleague of Sadr, was picked up from his home in Najaf along with cleric Bassim Al Ghuraifi, the radical leaderÂ’s office said. Two others were also arrested, but their identities were not immediately known.
A spokesman for Sadr’s group in Baghdad, Hazem Al Aaraji, denied he was one of those arrested as reported earlier, but confirmed that security forces had surrounded his house in the Shia shrine district of Kadhimiyah. “Military forces sealed off my house for three hours,” Aaraji told AFP, without specifying whether they were American or Iraqi.
| Hope they're American, you'll get treated better. |
Sadr’s representatives accused US forces of “carrying out arrests and seeking to destabilize regions where security prevails”. “Americans want confrontation with Sadr because this movement is gaining in popularity. We are trying hard to avoid confrontation and to pursue other ways to resolve this issue,” Sheikh Abderrazzak Al Midawi said in Najaf.
| "Please don't turn us over to the Sunnis!" |
A member of Sadr’s movement in Najaf, Sheikh Moayed al-Khazraji told reporters that the cleric had called for the crisis to be resolved “peacefully.” “Sayyed Sadr is keen to avoid the shedding of Iraqi blood and calls for calm,” he said.
| "Please don't turn us over to the Kurds!" |
The US military would neither confirm nor deny the arrests. “We are carrying out continuous operations against individuals we believe are responsible for sectarian violence in the country,” US military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Barry Johnson told AFP. |