Followers of Iraqi cleric Moqtada al-Sadr accused Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki of attacking them in order to appease his US allies Sunday and warned him his days in office might be numbered. On Saturday, Maliki issued a bluntly worded statement calling on Sadr's Mahdi Army to put aside its weapons and alleged the movement had been infiltrated by terrorist supporters of Saddam Hussein's ousted regime. Sadr's aides reacted with fury, and some suggested the statement had been designed to pave the way for a crackdown on their populist Shiite movement, which fields one of Iraq's largest armed militias. "Maliki's statement is just like a green light to occupation troops to strike and annihilate the Sadr movement," said Salah al-Ubaidi, Sadr's spokesman at his headquarters in the holy city of Najaf. US commanders blame Sadr's army for much of Iraq's sectarian violence and say they have evidence some of his commanders work for secret cells controlled by officers from neighbouring Iran's covert Qods Force.
In recent weeks and months there have been several raids by Iraqi and US forces on Mahdi Army strongholds in Baghdad, while in the south of the country the militia has fought street battles with Iraqi and British forces.