Sadr militia evicted from building

Iraq authorities have forcibly removed members of a hardline Shiite militia from a building they were illegally occupying in Najaf, the US military said today.

Members of the militia linked to Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr were given a deadline by the governor of Diwaniyah province to vacate the building in this holy city about 100 miles (160 kilometres) from Baghdad.

When they did not comply, the governor ordered Iraqi National Guard and police forces to evict them, said Maj Neal O’Brien of the 1st Infantry Division.

Troops from the Task Force 1st Battalion 14th Infantry provided security for the area from the outside.

“Iraq security forces conducted a breach of the building and secured the building and its contents,” Maj O’Brien said. ”There were no casualties.”

Al-Sadr’s al-Mahdi Army fought US troops for two months before a ceasefire was brokered in a Baghdad slum district named after al-Sadr’s father, who was killed by Saddam Hussein’s security apparatus. Before the ceasefire, skirmishes between the militia and US forces were an almost daily occurrence.

Al-Sadr, the 31-year-old mercurial leader of the movement, has vacillated between lashing out at the new interim government and expressing support for reconstruction efforts.

But the group has recently worked to bolster its credentials among other Shiite clerics by distancing itself from overt calls to arms and by eyeing a possible political role in the upcoming general elections in January.