BAGHDAD, Iraq - A U.S. military spokesman on Thursday hailed a joint American-Iraqi raid on Baghdad's leading Shiite Muslim mosque as proof of that the Baghdad security plan is being applied evenly against all sides of the country's sectarian divide.The raid, which took place Wednesday, angered the mosque's imam, who took the unusual step of canceling Friday prayer services at the historic Baratha mosque, where, Shiites believe, Muhammad's son-in-law, Ali, converted a Christian missionary to Islam in the seventh century.
| Too enraged to spittle properly, was he? |
In a statement released Thursday afternoon, the U.S. military said the mosque was raided "during operations targeting illegally armed militia kidnapping, torture and murder activities." It said the mosque was used "to conduct sectarian violence against Iraqi civilians as well as a safe haven and weapons storage area for illegal militia groups."
The statement said U.S. forces had provided protection around the mosque while Iraqi soldiers entered it with the cooperation of its security guards. Three Russian PKC machine guns and 80 assault rifles were seized, the statement said. No one was detained and no injuries were reported.
In an interview, al-Saghir said the mosque was raided by Americans who, he charged, had relied on false intelligence from the Supreme Council's enemies. He said the Americans were looking for "prisons, vaults and torturing operations." "As they are used to doing, the Americans believed these lies," he said. "It was a disappointment for them because they didn't find anything."
| Other than machine guns and rifles. |
| And what were the machine guns doing in the mosque, your Immenseness? |
Al-Saghir said he'd called the defense and interior ministries and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's office, demanding to know who'd authorized the search. "All of them denied any knowledge about the raid," Saghir said. "One of the Iraqi officials told me that the U.S. officials in Iraq are confused."
U.S. Army Lt. Col. Chris Garver, a spokesman for the coalition forces in Iraq, said American soldiers had entered the mosque only after the search had been completed and then only to help Iraqi special forces haul out the weapons. The search showed that the security forces would target Shiite militias, even if they had to enter mosques, he said. "The prime minister's guidance is that we will target everyone operating outside the law regardless of sect or political affiliation. We - the coalition forces - are continuing to do that," Garver said in an interview. "We'll go where we need to go."