Spring Break
Shiite fighting continues in Baghdad
Matthew Sheofield — Knight Ridder Newspapers
Issue date: 4/7/04 Section: News
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Sheik Muqtada al Sadr is wanted in connection with the murder nearly a year ago of a rival cleric. The cleric was hacked to death during a meeting of Shiite groups in Najaf one day after Baghdad fell to American forces, U.S. officials said.
There was no word on how soon Sadr might be seized, and he remained defiant in his headquarters at a mosque in Kufa, 90 miles south of Baghdad.
Tensions remained high throughout the country. Gunfire could be heard overnight in Sadr City, where hundreds of militants had massed in the streets Monday afternoon, promising fresh attacks. U.S. tanks were stationed outside every police station in the sprawling slum, home to 2 million Shiites.
Thirty-five miles west, U.S. Marines cordoned off the restive city of Fallujah in the Sunni Triangle, promising to find the perpetrators of an ambush last week that killed four American civilian security guards whose bodies later were mutilated by an angry mob. Roads between Baghdad and the Jordanian border, which run through Fallujah, were closed. U.S. officials insisted spiraling violence wasn't creating a crisis in Iraq.
"We are responsive to the level of violence," said U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt in Baghdad, the deputy chief of operations. Later he added, "We are not in a crisis."
Meanwhile, witnesses to Sunday's fighting in Sadr City described a scene in which U.S. soldiers stumbled into an ambush from which there was no hope of escape and Iraqi policemen surrendered their offices without a fight.
The witnesses said three American Humvees were moving down a narrow lane and were hemmed in by two- and three-story apartment buildings in the tightly packed slum. As they slowed in the lane, the street quickly filled with angry, armed militants, members of Mahdi's Army, who are loyal to Sadr. In the close space, the American soldiers found it difficult even to swing their weapons around and were overwhelmed. Two of the vehicles were set on fire. Soldiers were ripped from the third.
"The attackers took the third one for a drive," one witness said. "When they stopped, people tore everything of value from it."
Coalition officials said they had no information on how the eight soldiers were killed Sunday. Witnesses said they had seen at least two bodies of Americans after the Humvees were attacked.
When militia members came to seize one police station, another witness said, police offered no resistance. "You may have it, but you must promise to look after the jail as well," the witness quoted an officer as saying.
Soon after that, U.S. reinforcements moved in, streaming through every major entrance into the neighborhood. According to hospital reports, 30 Iraqis were killed and 60 were wounded during the fighting.
Military officials confirmed Monday that they skirmished three times with militia members on Sunday, but Kimmitt said all police stations were under coalition control by Monday morning.
