The Army says it killed 26 militants. Maliki criticizes the use of force in Sadr City without permission.
By Raheem Salman and Ned Parker
Los Angeles Times, 01 July 2007
BAGHDAD — A U.S. search early Saturday for fighters allegedly linked to Iran turned into a battle in which the military said it killed 26 militants. The Iraqi government rebuked the Americans for carrying out the raid in a Baghdad neighborhood without its permission, and local leaders said many innocent bystanders had been hurt.
The raid could stir further difficulties for Prime Minister Nouri Maliki, whose relationship is already rocky with Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr. Maliki, in charge of a fractious coalition government, is locked in a confrontation with Iraq's leading Sunni bloc, which holds 44 seats in the 275-member parliament, over an arrest warrant for Iraq's culture minister, who is a Sunni. The Sunnis have withdrawn from the Cabinet over the warrant for Asad Kamal Hashimi in the slayings of two sons of an independent Sunni legislator.
The military could face a backlash from Maliki's government over the early morning raids in Sadr City, the bastion of Sadr's Al Mahdi militia and home to more than 2.5 million people. A failure to stand up to the Americans might further erode backing for Maliki's fragile coalition government among the general Shiite population, which forms the bulwark of his support.
Maliki, who has been in a tug of war with U.S. commanders over raids in Sadr City, quickly issued a statement criticizing the Americans for not clearing the operation with the Iraqi government. He said the government "refuses" to permit the U.S. to "carry out any military operation in any Iraqi province or city without first acquiring permission from the leadership of the Iraqi forces."
The U.S. military said the 26 militants who were killed had attacked soldiers with small arms, rocket-propelled grenades and roadside bombs. The troops also detained 17 militants during the operation against extremists with "close ties to Iranian terror networks," the military said.
Representatives from Sadr's movement and witnesses said the Americans opened fire mostly on civilians. Sheik Salah Ubaidi, a Sadr spokesman in the Shiite holy city of Najaf, said that among the dead were three women and an elderly man in a single family.
Residents of Sadr City described a harrowing ordeal.
Haj Mohammed Dawood, 50, said he was awakened at 2 a.m. by the sound of U.S. gunfire. Soon the noise grew louder and bullets hit his home, he said.
Laith Jassim, 11, said he was wounded in the shoulder by shrapnel during the U.S. raid.
"When I was injured," he said, "my brothers were not able to send me to the hospital because the Americans were shooting." He asked angrily, "Do I look like a Mahdi army member to you?"
Maliki has signed off on raids in Sadr City on a case-by-case basis, but this time he seemed unwilling to back the targeting of Sadr's militia.
Last fall, Maliki blocked the Americans from carrying out raids in Sadr City. But with the start of the U.S. troop buildup in February, the military secured a guarantee from Maliki to be allowed to go after Sadr militiamen if they were considered "rogue members" affiliated with Iran.
With Maliki in danger of a Sunni withdrawal from the political process, the prime minister might be rethinking his strategy toward the Sadr loyalists, whose six Cabinet members quit in April and whose 33-member bloc started boycotting parliament two weeks ago to protest the bombing of a Shiite shrine in Samarra.
In other developments, the U.S. military reported that it found 35 to 40 bodies in a mass grave south of Fallouja in Al Anbar province, where tribes have turned against Islamic militants linked to Al Qaeda in the last year.
In Diyala province, northeast of Baghdad, a suicide bomber struck near a lineup of new recruits in Muqdadiya, killing six and wounding three, police said.
In south Baghdad, an armor-piercing bomb believed to have been manufactured in Iran killed a U.S. soldier and wounded three, the Army said.
The death raised the U.S. military toll in Iraq to 3,578, according to icasualties.org, a website that tracks military casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan. In the last three months, 331 U.S. troops have died, the deadliest quarter for U.S. forces in Iraq since the invasion.
-----------------------------
Citation: Raheem Salman and Ned Parker. "U.S. raid angers Iraqi prime minister," Los Angeles Times, 01 July 2007.
Original URL: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-iraq1jul01,0,2625206.story?coll=la-home-center
-----------------------------