Cleric calls for US troops to leave Iraq

Radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr appeared in public for the first time in months to demand that US troops leave Iraq.

Hours later yesterday, the notorious leader of al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia in the city of Basra was killed in a shootout as British and Iraq troops tried to arrest him, police and the British military said, further enflaming tensions in the Shiite areas of southern Iraq.