Amid confusion, Iraq Shi’ites accuse US troops

By Michael Georgy and Alastair Macdonald

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Politicians from Iraq’s Shi’ite
majority accused U.S. troops of massacring 20 worshippers at a
Baghdad mosque on Sunday but police and residents said many
died in clashes between Shi’ite militia fighters and Americans.

U.S. military spokesmen declined comment on the accusations
but issued a statement describing a raid by Iraqi special
forces, with U.S. advisers, on a building that was not a mosque
in roughly the same area. It said 16 insurgents were killed.

Police said U.S. forces clashed with the Mehdi Army militia
of radical Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, killing 20 fighters.

With Baghdad under night curfew it was impossible to pin
down what happened. But unusually strident anti-U.S. coverage
on government-run state television showed a fierce
confrontation between the ruling Shi’ite Islamists and the U.S.
administration.

A spokesman for Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari said the
premier was “deeply concerned” and had called the U.S.
commander in Iraq, General George Casey, who said there would
be a full inquiry.

Also on Sunday, U.S. forces arrested 41 officials from the
Shi’ite-controlled Interior Ministry and freed 17 foreigners
from a secret jail, government, political and U.S. sources
said.

Northeast of Baghdad, Iraqi troops found 30 bodies, many of
them beheaded, on a village street. And in the same area around
Baquba, police arrested one of their own majors, the brother of
the regional police chief, over Shi’ite death squad killings.

The events came as Washington raises pressure on the
Shi’ites to bring minority Sunnis into government — it is even
planning landmark talks with hostile Shi’ite Iran to break the
impasse. Many fear a failure of the plan could plunge Iraq into
civil war.

Iraqiya state television carried lengthy footage of the
bloodied corpses of men in civilian clothes, in a room where no
weapons were visible, calling them victims of U.S. gunfire.

“American forces raid and burn Mustafa mosque. A number of
citizens martyred inside,” it said in an on-screen headline.

JAAFARI ALLY

One dead man had a membership card from Jaafari’s Dawa
party. Jaafari ally Jawad al-Maliki condemned a U.S. “policy of
aggression.” Leading aides to Sadr denounced the U.S. troops.

Sadr aide Hazim al-Araji later said: “We are calling for
calm … “We do not want to be dragged to a third war.”

Though supposedly disbanded in 2004 after two uprisings
were crushed by U.S. forces, the Mehdi Army remains a
significant force, along with other pro-government militias
which Sunnis accuse of running death squads against them.

Since 2004, Sadr, with apparent Iranian backing has become
a virtual kingmaker within the dominant Shi’ite Alliance bloc
– he crucially is backing Jaafari to remain prime minister
despite opposition from Sunnis, Kurds and some Alliance rivals.

Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, at the heart of urgent U.S.
efforts to forge a unity government, said on Saturday the
militias must be brought to heel and accused them of killing
more people over the last few weeks than Sunni rebel bombings.

Reprisal attacks after the destruction of a Shi’ite shrine
a month ago killed hundreds, though Sadr and other Shi’ite
leaders called publicly for restraint among their armed
followers.

CONFUSED ACCOUNTS

Residents in the Shaab district of northeastern Baghdad
said they saw and heard heavy clashes between U.S. troops and
gunmen they believed were from the Mehdi Army, close to the
Sadr-linked Mustafa mosque. U.S. helicopters were overhead they
said.

Police sources said they understood that U.S. troops had
raided an area around the mosque and got into a gun battle with
the Mehdi Army that left about 20 militiamen dead.

Sadr aides said troops killed unarmed people: “The American
forces went into Mustafa mosque at prayers and killed more than
20 worshippers,” Araji said. “They tied them up and shot them.”

Transport Minister Salem al-Maliki, from Sadr’s group,
said: “This was part of an escalation programme to drag Sadr’s
group into another battle or to obstruct the political
process.”

After declining requests to respond to the allegations, the
U.S. military issued a statement saying Iraqi special forces,
along with U.S. advisers, killed 16 “insurgents” in Aadhamiya,
next to Shaab, and detained 15. The statement denied any mosque
was entered and said a foreign, non-Western hostage was freed.

After the statement was issued, U.S. spokesmen declined to
elaborate or say if the raid was close to the Mustafa mosque.

There was also mystery over the details of the raid on the
Interior Ministry facility, which one political source
described as an Education Ministry warehouse in central
Baghdad.

A U.S. source confirmed American and Iraqi forces seized 41
Interior Ministry personnel and free 17 foreigners at a secret
jail complex. There was no detail on their identities. Many
foreign Muslims are accused of being Sunni al Qaeda
sympathisers.

Nor were the identities of those arrested clear. Shi’ite
militias are accused of infiltrating the Interior Ministry.

In November, U.S. troops freed 173 prisoners, some of them
tortured, from a secret Interior Ministry facility in Baghdad.

(Additional reporting by Alastair Macdonald, Mariam
Karouny, Terry Friel and Mohammed al-Ramahi)