Militia seizes southern city in Iraq

The Shiite militia run by anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr seized control of the southern Iraqi city of Amarah today in one of the boldest acts of defiance yet by the country’s powerful, unofficial armies, witnesses and police said.

A British military official said 25 gunmen and police were killed.

Mahdi Army fighters stormed three main police stations Friday morning, planting explosives that flattened the buildings, residents said.

About 800 black-clad militiamen with Kalashnikov rifles and rocket-propelled grenades were patrolling city streets in commandeered police vehicles, eyewitnesses said. Other fighters had set up roadblocks on routes into the city and sound trucks circulated telling residents to stay indoors.

The fighting broke out as the United States acknowledged it’s military drive to crush violence in Baghdad had largely failed and only days after sectarian killings raged through the region around Balad, killing about 100 people.

Americans had only returned the Balad area, just north of Baghdad, to the control of the Iraqi army in August. About the same time, British forces turned over control of Amarah to Iraqi security forces.

The militiamen later withdrew from their positions and lifted their siege of police headquarters under a temporary truce negotiated with an al-Sadr envoy. It wasn’t clear on Friday afternoon whether security forces had reasserted control over the city.

British military spokesman Maj. Charlie Burbridge said 600 Iraqi army soldiers had retaken control of the city, but not before the 25 gunmen and police were killed in violence that began last night.

“They’ve applied a solution and at the moment it’s holding,” Burbridge said. “At the moment, it’s tense but calm,” he said.

Britain had 500 soldiers on standby if called for, Burbridge said, saying British military authorities were “confident that they’ve (Iraqi security forces) responded as best as they can".

Britain returned control of the city to Iraqi authorities in August.

Al-Sadr’s envoy, whose identity remains unknown, was due to meet with Maysan province Gov. Adil Mudher, local Mahdi Army commander Fadil al-Bahadli, and al-Sadr’s representative in Amarah, Mohanad al-Moussawi.

The Iraqi army dispatched two companies to Amarah from Basra, the south’s largest city, and a British officer, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to make press statements, said Iraqi army and police forces were massing to retake the city of 750,000.

Authorities this morning imposed a curfew in Amarah until further notice, the Defence Ministry spokesman said.

“All the parties have started a truce as two army companies were dispatched from Basra.” Mohammad al-Alaskari said. ”But the situation is still tense.”

Shiite militia violence, mainly against the country’s Sunni minority, has ravaged Iraq since February when a Shiite holy place in Samara was blown up. The violence has been on the increase, but this is the first recent fighting that has pitted Shiites against one another on such a scale.

Prime minister Nouri Maliki dispatched an emergency security delegation that included the minister of state for Security Affairs and top officials from the Interior and Defence ministries, said Yassin Majid, the prime minister’s media adviser said. Al-Sadr representatives had rushed Amarah from the holy city of Najaf to the north.

Karim Khalaf, the Interior Ministry spokesman, said Iraqi security forces had reached the outskirts of the city.

At least 15 people, including five militiamen, one policeman and two bystanders, had been killed in clashes, Dr. Zamil Shia, director of Amarah’s department of health, said from the city, about 200 miles south-east of Baghdad.

The fighting also wounded at least 59 people – 31 militiamen, six policemen and 22 civilians, including 3 children – according to Riyadh Saed, the duty physician at the city’s main hospital.

The events in Amarah highlight the threat of wider violence between rival Shiite factions, who have entrenched themselves among the majority Shiite population and are blamed for killings of rival Sunnis.

Fighting broke out yesterday after Qassim al-Tamimi, the provincial head of police intelligence and a leading member of the rival Shiite Badr Brigade militia, was killed by a roadside bomb. In retaliation, his family kidnapped the teenage brother of the Mahdi Army commander in Amarah, Sheikh Fadel al-Bahadli, to demand the hand-over of al-Tamimi’s killers.

Khalaf, the Interior Ministry spokesman, said three people were arrested Thursday on suspicion of involvement in al-Tamimi’s murder.

Amarah, a major population center in the resource-rich yet impoverished south, is a traditional center of Shiite defiance to successive Iraqi regimes. It’s famed marshlands were drained by former dictator Saddam Hussein during the 1990s in reprisal for the city’s role in the Shiite uprising that blazed through the region after the 1991 Gulf War.

The city lies along the Tigris river just 30 miles from the border with Iran, whose Shiite-controlled government is accused of backing Iraqi militia groups suspected of involvement in sectarian killings now wracking the country.

The showdown between the Mahdi and Badr militias has the potential to develop into an all-out conflict between the heavily armed groups and their political sponsors, both with large blocs in parliament and backers of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s ruling coalition. It also could shatter the unity of Iraq’s majority Shiites at a time when an enduring Sunni insurgency shows no signs of abating.

Badr and the Mahdi Army have struggled for years for control in the south, al-Sadr’s political bloc, the so-called “Sadrists”, and the Badr’s backers, the SCIRI, both being members of al-Maliki’s ruling coalition.

The fighting comes a day after the chief military spokesman in Iraq said a massive two-month-old security operation in Baghdad had failed to meet targets while the monthly death toll for American troops in October had climbed to 74, putting October on course to be the deadliest for U.S. forces in nearly two years.

“The violence is indeed disheartening,” Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell told reporters in Baghdad.

Sunni insurgents battling U.S. forces to the north made a further show of force on Friday, with masked gunmen linked to the main Sunni insurgent group, the Mujahedeen Shura Council staging a military style parade through the cities of Haqlaniyah and Haditha in the western province of Anbar.

The gunmen urged residents to back an announcement by the group on Sunday that it has established an Islamic state made up of six provinces, including Baghdad.

That followed a similar demonstration by masked gunmen in Ramadi, a Sunni stronghold in Anbar, where US forces have taken heavy losses against the insurgents.

The province’s police chief was assassinated yesterday by gunmen who burst into his home in Ramadi.

Elsewhere, mortar attacks killed 10 people in the Iraqi city of Balad, where sectarian fighting between Sunnis and Shiites had already killed 95 people.

Gunmen shot and killed four men trapping hawks in the Balad Roz district, 55 miles north east of Baghdad, said a police officer. The trapping of hawks for sale to trainers and hunters is common in Iraqi in the autumn months.

In Khalis, 13 miles east of Baqouba, a police patrol clashed this morning with gunmen, killing three onlookers and wounding three others, he added.

Shiite backers of Lebanon’s Hezbollah guerrilla group rallied in the sprawling Baghdad slum of Sadr city to mark a day of opposition to the state of Israel. Among the 600 participants were those carrying banners reading, “Israel is a cancer in the Arab nation’s body.” The slum is a stronghold of the Mahdi army militia.

Despite that show of support, a Baghdad residential complex housing Palestinians was attacked with mortars Thursday night, killing 4 men and injuring 11 other people, police Capt. Mohammed Abdul Ghani said.