Shi’ite militia and Iraqi troops in fierce clashes

By Imad al-Khozaie

DIWANIYA, Iraq (Reuters) – At least 20 Iraqi soldiers were
killed in street fighting with Shi’ite militiamen in the town
of Diwaniya on Monday, some of the bloodiest clashes yet among
rival factions in Shi’ite Muslim southern Iraq.

Further underlining the deadly challenges facing the
100-day-old national unity government of Prime Minister Nuri
al-Maliki, a suicide car bomber in Baghdad killed 13 policemen
and wounded 62 other people outside the Interior Ministry.

Maliki has vowed to disarm all militias, including those of
fellow Shi’ite Islamists with seats in the coalition cabinet.
But U.S.-trained government forces face an uphill task.

The Defense Ministry, local officials and the Mehdi Army of
populist cleric Moqtada al-Sadr gave conflicting accounts of
battles overnight and into the day in Diwaniya, a normally
placid provincial capital, 180 km (110 miles) south of Baghdad.

A Defense Ministry spokesman said 20 of Iraqi soldiers were
killed along with 50 unidentified gunmen who had stormed police
stations after dark on Sunday. A local leader of the Mehdi Army
said only two of his men had been killed.

An agreement brokered in the nearby holy city of Najaf
between Sadr and the Diwaniya governor, from a party that
rivals Sadr within Maliki’s dominant Shi’ite bloc, brought an
edgy calm by nightfall after hours of mortar, rocket and
machinegun fire.

The Baghdad bombing resembled many carried out by al Qaeda
and pro-Saddam Hussein militants from the once dominant Sunni
Arab minority and was one of the worst in the capital since
U.S. and Iraqi troops launched a security clampdown three weeks
ago.

Eight U.S. soldiers were among more than 60 people killed
on Sunday in violence that challenged Maliki’s latest comments
his forces had the upper hand and there would be no civil war.

The chief U.S. military spokesman said killings in Baghdad
had almost halved this month compared to July and that car
bombings were at an eight-month low.

But Major General William Caldwell acknowledged there had
been a rise again in the past two days.

Sunniinsurgents long posed the main threat to U.S. efforts
to install a stable elected government but militia violence
against Sunnis and among Shi’ites is now killing more people.

POPULARITY

Maliki has vowed to take on militias, and, senior officials
say, plans to ease some Sadr supporters out of his cabinet.

But Sadr remains popular among poor Shi’ites, partly for
his charity work modeled on Lebanon’s Iranian-backed Hizbollah,
and despite the crushing by U.S. troops of his two revolts in
2004.

He has lately enjoyed warm ties with Iran, whose Shi’ite
Islamist leaders maintain close contact in Iraq and whom the
United States accuses of providing arms to Shi’ite militias.

A hospital official and an army source in Diwaniya both put
the army’s death toll at 25 with a further five missing. A
Reuters reporter saw 19 bodies in army uniform in the morgue,
as well as seven civilians. The hospital said nine civilians
died.

Fifty-one people, including eight soldiers, were wounded.

Casualty figures for militants are often hard to establish.

A senior police source in the town said Iraqi troops
stormed an area known as a Mehdi Army stronghold, partly in
response to a rocket attack on a nearby Polish military base on
Saturday.

The Defense Ministry said troops moved Diwaniya after
police stations came under attack and that they were now in
control.

A Reuters reporter saw gunmen in plain clothes in control
of intersections in the south of the town in the afternoon,
while Iraqi troops appeared in control of the northern
district.

U.S. aircraft circled overhead during the day.

The provincial governor, Khalil Jalil Hamza, went to Najaf
to meet Sadr’s aides, a local government official said.

A senior Sadr official in Diwaniya, Nahidh al-Naieli, later
said he had received orders from Najaf that the Mehdi Army
should leave Diwaniya and “halt military operations.”

“Sadr also asked the Iraqi military to end raids against
the Mehdi Army and insisted that the Mehdi Army has the right
to deploy its soldiers wherever it wants,” Naieli said.

Rival groups are vying for control of Shi’ite southern
Iraq, site of one of the world’s great oilfields around Basra.

British Defense Minister Des Browne, on a visit to Baghdad,
said his forces would hand over a second of the four
British-run southern provinces to formal Iraqi security control
shortly.

Such handovers are central to U.S. and British hopes for
withdrawal.

(Additional reporting by Michael Georgy, Alastair
Macdonald, Mussab Al-Khairalla, Ross Colvin and Ibon
Villelabeitia)