In a sign of growing rage against the Iraqi and U.S. governments, tens of thousands of Shiites marched in their strongholds across Baghdad on Thursday to protest a crackdown on Shiite militiamen that has led to more than 125 deaths.
The government announced a curfew across the capital until Sunday in an attempt to quell violence, which has spread to several cities since the offensive began Tuesday in the southern city of Basra.
Loyalists of Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr rejected U.S. and Iraqi assertions that the Basra operation was aimed at rogue militiamen and insisted it was targeting Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia. A statement released late Thursday by Sadr’s political office said the clergyman remained committed to a cease-fire that Sadr imposed on his militia last August.
“Moqtada al-Sadr is calling on everyone to follow political solutions and peaceful protest, and not to spill Iraqi blood, to reach a solution to the current crisis,” the statement said.
But a fourth day of ferocious rocket and mortar attacks in and around the U.S.-guarded Green Zone, home to the U.S. Embassy and most Iraqi government offices, underscored the sense among Shiite fighters that the United States and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki were working to cripple Sadr’s movement ahead of local elections planned this fall.
The U.S. military said the attacks were launched from Shiite areas of eastern Baghdad and that American forces killed two “terrorists” Thursday suspected of involvement in the barrages. An American civilian working with the U.S. Embassy was among those killed Thursday when a rocket was fired into the Green Zone in central Baghdad.
U.S. military officials said that Iranian-made 170 mm rockets were among the weapons raining into the zone, The Associated Press reported. One official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information, said they have included rockets stamped with 2007 Iranian manufacture dates.
The showdown in Iraq has placed Iraqi and U.S. officials in an awkward position. Both have described the Iraqi security force crackdown as a sign of al-Maliki’s determination to stabilize areas plagued by fighting between rival Shiite militias. But they also are insisting that Sadr’s fighters are not the problem, despite his militia’s role in such unrest. Mollifying Sadr is crucial if he is to continue his cease-fire, which is credited with helping reduce violence nationwide.
“This is not the Sadr trend led by Sayyid Moqtada Sadr that has been the ongoing source of violence and instability,” said U.S. Embassy spokesman Philip Reeker. His use of the honorific “Sayyid” was a sign of the United States’ attempts to remain on relatively good terms with Sadr.
Reeker blamed the violence on a “subset” of the Mahdi Army.
“They really are essentially criminal militias and they are the ones that have been the difficulty in Basra,” Reeker said.
Such statements have been met with skepticism from Sadr supporters.
“They made this crisis because the Sadr movement, they feel, will be an obstacle in the upcoming elections. They feel they won’t succeed in the elections,” said Abu Ali, a Mahdi Army member in Sadr City. The Baghdad slum is a Sadr stronghold.
Ali said violence would soar if al-Maliki did not halt the operation and meet Sadr’s demands for negotiations.
“We will be more determined. Enough humiliation,” he said.
Al-Maliki reiterated his demand that “criminal gangs” causing unrest in Basra should disarm within a three-day deadline that expires Saturday.
“We are capable of facing any forces everywhere. We are determined to eradicate these criminal gangs. There will not be any negotiations with them,” he said. Al-Maliki also made a point of not naming Sadr’s Mahdi Army as the troublemaker.
Scores of people have died since the fighting erupted early Tuesday, including at least 80 in Basra, Iraq’s second-largest city, police said. They said an additional 45 people had died in Kut, the capital of Wasit province, in clashes between militiamen and Iraqi security forces.
In Baghdad, the dead have included at least two Americans fatally injured by rockets fired into the Green Zone on Sunday and Thursday. The State Department ordered employees Thursday not to go outside without wearing helmets and flak vests, hearkening back to the summer, when daily bombardments were the norm.
At least five barrages hit the Green Zone or nearby neighborhoods Thursday, the U.S. military said. Rocket attacks on three U.S. bases elsewhere in the capital injured at least four American soldiers Thursday. In addition, a U.S. soldier was killed by a roadside bomb in eastern Baghdad, bringing to at least 4,004 the number of American troops killed in Iraq since the start of the war, according to an AP count.
Thunderous booms rocked the capital throughout the day, and police and U.S. military reports indicated that as many as 18 mortars landed in various parts of the city.
Most of southern Iraq’s major cities remained under curfews. In Basra, the major oil port city 275 miles south of Baghdad, residents reported that gunmen were patrolling the streets.
Residents said food prices were soaring at local markets because it was difficult to get goods into the city, where clashes continued Thursday. In a Sadr stronghold in western Basra, hundreds of people led by tribal sheiks held a protest demanding that the government halt the military operation and restore electricity and water, which they said had been cut three days earlier.
Other witnesses said downtown Basra was empty of civilians and vehicles.
