Gunmen kill senior Sadrist official in Iraq
BAGHDAD (AP) - April 11, 2008 The killing threatened to raise tensions amid a violent standoff
between al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia and the U.S.-backed Iraqi
government.
Riyadh al-Nouri, the director of al-Sadr's office in Najaf, was
gunned down as he drove home after attending Friday prayers in the
adjacent city of Kufa, a police officer and a local Sadrist
official said. Both spoke on condition of anonymity because they
were not authorized to speak to the media.
Al-Sadr has his headquarters in Najaf, but the shrines in that
city are dominated by a rival Shiite group and most of his
followers are concentrated in Kufa.
Al-Nouri and a top al-Sadr lieutenant, Sheik Mustafa al-Yacoubi,
were detained by American forces in April 2004 in the killing a
year earlier of a moderate Shiite cleric, Sheik Abdul-Majid
al-Khoei, in Najaf shortly after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
An arrest warrant was issued for al-Sadr himself but never
served.
That along with the closing by U.S. authorities of al-Sadr's
newspaper triggered a massive uprising that engulfed Shiite areas
of central and southern Iraq. Several thousand people were killed
before the rebellion was finally suppressed, and the two men were
released in 2005.
Al-Sadr's spokesman in Najaf, Salah al-Obeidi, said the United
States bore responsibility for Friday's killing because of its
continued presence in Iraq.
Meanwhile, sporadic clashes between Iraqi security forces and
militia fighters broke out for a sixth day in the Mahdi Army
strongholds of Baghdad's Sadr City and the southern port city of
Basra.
Elsewhere in eastern Baghdad, a roadside bomb destroyed an
armored vehicle in eastern Baghdad, killing an Iraqi.
And a rocket apparently aimed at the U.S.-protected Green Zone
also fell short, crashing into a second-floor room and blowing a
hole in the wall of the Palestine Hotel in central Baghdad.
U.S. airstrikes also killed 12 more suspected militants.
An unmanned drone fired on a group of gunmen carrying grenades
and mortars overnight in Sadr City, killing six of them, the U.S.
military said.
Armed drones are routinely used for long air patrols over the
capital. They rely on their sensors to pick up militant activity
during the night, and insurgents do not have air defenses capable
of shooting down the slow-moving aircraft.
And the British military said a helicopter had hit a group of
gunmen in the Hayaniyah district of central Basra overnight,
killing six of them.
"They were positively identified as an active mortar team,"
British military spokesman Maj. Tom Holloway said.
The southern port city was the scene of fierce combat when Iraqi
government forces launched a weeklong offensive against Shiite
militias on March 25. British forces also took part in the
fighting.
But that violence has ebbed. On Friday, authorities lifted a
two-week ban on vehicle movement in Baghdad's mainly Shiite Shula
neighborhood. A similar ban on vehicles in Sadr City district is
scheduled to be lifted on Saturday.
Violence in Iraq had declined last year and early this year
following a seven-month-old cease-fire by al-Sadr, an influx of
American troops and a Sunni revolt against al-Qaida in Iraq.
But the recent government crackdown on the Mahdi Army has
provoked fierce retaliation, underscoring the fragility of the
security gains.
Separately, the U.S. military said Friday that the pullout of
the five brigades that comprised last year's buildup of U.S. forces
into Iraq is continuing with the redeployment back to Fort Rille in
Kansas of the 4th Brigade of the First Infantry Division.
The 4th Brigade was based in southern Baghdad, a district of
about 1.2 million people.
All five surge brigades are due to return home by the end of
July, leaving about 140,000 U.S. troops in Iraq.
---
Associated Press writers Sameer N. Yacoub and Qassim Abdul-Zahra
in Baghdad contributed to this report.
