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International News Title: 40 dead in fierce Iraq street fighting [ 2006 election is around the corner ] Shiite militiamen drove back Iraqi forces in a city south of Baghdad today in fierce street fighting that killed 40 people. The fighting underlined the difficulties facing the government as it tries to rein in the sectarian forces of a radical anti-US cleric. In the capital, Baghdad, a suicide car bomber drove into a checkpoint outside the Interior Ministry, killing at least 16 people, most of them policemen. In one of the deadliest weekends for the US military in recent months, nine US soldiers were killed on Saturday and yesterday in and around Baghdad, eight of them by roadside bombs and one by gunfire. South of the city in Diwaniyah, gun battles broke out at about 11pm last night when Iraqi soldiers conducted raids in three neighbourhoods to flush out militiamen and seize weapons. The fighting continued for most of today with the militia of the Mahdi Army, which is loyal to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. By the evening, the militia had set up road checkpoints and taken over seven neighbourhoods in the south and east of the city, while the Iraqi army was controlling the northern and western parts. Dr Mohammed Abdul-Muhsen, of the city’s general hospital, said 40 people had been killed – 25 Iraqi soldiers, 10 civilians and five militiamen. He said the hospital treated 75 wounded. The militiamen used rocket-propelled grenades and automatic assault rifles, and at least 10 of them were arrested. Sheikh Abdul-Razaq al-Nidawi, manager of al-Sadr’s office in Diwaniyah, said trouble had been brewing since Saturday night when the army arrested an al-Sadr supporter from the Jumhouri neighbourhood. Yesterday, the army raided the same place and “a gunfight erupted between them and the Mahdi Army”. Early today, “a big force of the army raided Jumhouri, Sadr and Askouri neighbourhoods and clashes broke out (again) between the army and the Mahdi Army”, he said. An indefinite vehicle ban was imposed in the city. Coalition forces were not involved in the fighting, but provided support by an aerial quick reaction force, using MI24 HIND and MI8 HIP helicopters as a show of force and to prevent possible attacks from rooftops. Coalition quick reaction forces were also patrolling the area around their camp near the city, but did not go into the city. Diwaniyah, 80 miles south of Baghdad, is a Shiite-dominated city where the influence of Mahdi Army has been gradually increasing. It already runs a virtual parallel government in Sadr City, a slum in eastern Baghdad. But the government of prime minister Nouri Maliki, a Shiite, has found it difficult to rein in al-Sadr, whose movement holds 30 of the 275 seats in parliament and five Cabinet posts. Al-Sadr’s backing also helped Mr Maliki win the top job during painstaking negotiations within the Shiite alliance that led to the ousting of prime minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari. Al-Sadr mounted two major uprisings against the American-led coalition in 2004 when US authorities closed his newspaper and pushed an Iraqi judge into issuing an arrest warrant against him. But American forces have also been wary of confronting the militia because of al-Sadr’s clout over the government and his large following among Shiites, who are in a majority in Iraq. In the capital, a car suicide bomber slammed into a police checkpoint outside the Interior Ministry in mid-morning today, when traffic is usually heavy. The blast could be heard more than a mile away, and smoke could be seen rising from the scene. The blast killed 16 people, including 10 policemen, and 18 policemen were among the 47 people wounded. Elsewhere in the capital, a roadside bomb in the mainly Sunni western neighbourhood of Jihad struck a car transporting five barber shop workers, killed one person and seriously wounding another four. Today’s violence came a day after Iraq saw a string of bombings and shooting across the country. In one of the deadliest attacks, a group of assailants in three cars opened fire at an open-air night market in Khalis, a mostly Shiite town 50 miles north of Baghdad, killing 23 people and wounding 25 others. A suicide bomber on a minibus near the Palestine Hotel in central Baghdad killed eight civilians and wounded 18, while two back-to-back suicide car bombings in the northern city of Kirkuk killed nine people hours after another suicide car bomb killed one person. In Basra, Iraq’s second largest city, 340 miles south east of Baghdad, a motorcycle bomb at a night market killed four people and wounded 15 yesterday.
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#1. To: TLBSHOW (#0)
You've got until Labor Day.
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