Iraqi forces detain 400 Shiite fighters

Apparently seeking to calm fears that he will not go after militia gunmen loyal to one of his key political backers, Iraqi prime minister Nouri Maliki said 400 fighters from the Mahdi Army had been arrested over the past several weeks.

In Baghdad today, bombers and gunmen killed at least 19 more people in a series of attacks in the pre-noon hours as the capital faces a surge in violence ahead of a planned US-Iraqi security crackdown.

A roadside bomb also struck a police patrol near a market in the northern city of Mosul, killing a bystander and wounding five people, including four policemen, police said.

It was the first time the Shiite prime minister has specifically detailed any arrests of figures from the Mahdi Army militia that is loyal to his key backer, the radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. Many of the militiamen are believed responsible for a majority of the sectarian violence in Baghdad over the past year.

Yassin Majid, a senior Maliki adviser, said reports that dozens that senior militia leaders had been detained were incorrect.

A Baghdad Mahdi Army commander, meanwhile, said US and Iraqi troops launched a major campaign Tuesday in Um al-Maalef, a Shiite neighbourhood in south Baghdad.

“They detained every man who was able to carry weapons. We heard from our people in the area that about 400 people were detained,” said the militia commander.

He said that in December US troops had killed one of the Mahdi Army’s top commanders, known as Abu al-Sudour, in Sadr City.

The Italian daily Corriere della Sera reported today that Maliki was deeply critical of US President George Bush during a briefing with a small group of reporters.

It quoted the embattled Iraqi leader as saying Bush had capitulated to domestic pressure when he criticised the hanging of former leader Saddam Hussein.

He further struck back at comments by secretary of state Condoleezza Rice which suggested Maliki was in a weak position and on borrowed time.

He said such remarks were giving aid and comfort to militants fighting to drive out American troops and unseat his government.

Maliki was also quoted as saying his military could control security in Iraq without direct US involvement in three to six months if Washington stepped up the dispatch of arms to his forces.

In the deadliest attack today, three car bombs detonated within minutes of each other in front of a wholesale vegetable market near a Shiite enclave on the edge the predominantly Sunni neighbourhood of Dora in southern Baghdad, killing at least 10 people and wounding 30, police said.

The force of the 10.20am blast blew off part of the metal roof covering a loading area and a burned out van still had its bundle of lettuce and onions tied to the top.

AP Television News footage also showed the charred hulk of a car wedged under a truck. Lettuce and bloodstained clothes were scattered on the ground.

The al-Rashid market is located near Dora’s Abu Dishir area on the highway that links the capital with the Iraq’s southern areas. Most of the shop owners and workers were Shiites from Abu Dishir, although some Sunni vendors also use the market.

Farmers from Najaf, Hillah, Diwaniyah and other provinces come to sell tomatoes, eggplant, carrots, potatoes and other vegetables or to buy vegetables and fruit imported from Syria to sell in their provinces.

“I will think twice before transporting goods to this market again,” said a driver from Hillah, a predominantly Shiite town 60 miles south of Baghdad, who identified himself only as Hussein.

About an hour later, a parked car bomb also struck a religiously mixed commercial area on a busy thoroughfare in central Baghdad, killing four people and wounding 10 others. The blast burned many civilian cars and shattered the windows of nearby storefronts.

APTN footage showed the mass of metal from one of the cars that was used as a weapon, with the steering wheel jutting out from the wreckage.

Earlier today, a car bomb was detonated as an Iraqi police patrol passed in a volatile area of central Baghdad, killing four people, including two policemen, and wounding 11, according to police.

Gunmen also opened fire on a police patrol near the al-Shaab stadium in eastern Baghdad, killing one policeman and wounding another, police said.

Nobody claimed responsibility for the attacks, but car bombings are the hallmark of Sunni militants, who appear to be taking advantage of a waiting period before a planned US-Iraqi security crackdown in Baghdad to step up attacks on Shiites.

There had been a relative lull in Baghdad violence since the first of the year, although dozens of bodies have turned up daily after being dumped on the streets, apparent victims of so-called death squads largely run by Shiite militias.

The bombings and shootings came a day after a suicide car bomber killed 17 Shiites at a teeming Sadr City market, while gunmen in a predominantly Sunni neighbourhood of Baghdad shot up a convoy of democracy workers in an ambush that took the lives of an American woman and three bodyguards.

An Iraqi army officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of security concerns, said the attack on the Western convoy took place in Yarmouk, a predominantly Sunni neighbourhood in western Baghdad.

The three-car convoy belonged to the Washington-based National Democratic Institute, according to Les Campbell, the not-for-profit group’s Middle East director. He said the four dead included an American woman along with three security contractors – a Hungarian, a Croatian and an Iraqi. Two others were wounded, one seriously, Campbell said by telephone from Washington. Their names were withheld until their families could be notified.

“It appeared to be an attack with fairly heavy weapons, we don’t know what kind,” Campbell said. “We have some information that a firefight ensued. Our security company responded to the attack.”

Campbell said the ambush took place at midday as the group returned from a program elsewhere in Baghdad.

Few foreigners and even fewer women have been caught up in Iraq’s recent wave of violence as many Western groups have left and those who remain have tightened security and curtailed their movements after a series of kidnappings and beheadings. The last known American female civilian to be killed was Marla Ruzicka, a 28-year-old rights activist from California who died in a car bombing in April 2005.