Region | Iraq
Sadr's Mahdi Army stronghold captured by Iraqi forces in Basra
Iraqi soldiers swooped on the Basra stronghold of Shiite cleric Moqtada Al Sadr on Saturday, saying they had seized control of his militia bastion where they suffered an embarrassing setback in late March.
- Reuters
- Published: 11:50 April 19, 2008
- Government forces said they captured the district of Hayaniya in Basra, long a stronghold of cleric Moqtada Al Sadr's Mehdi Army, achieving an objective that had eluded them during a crackdown last month.
- Image Credit: Reuters
Basra: Iraqi soldiers swooped on the Basra stronghold of Shiite cleric Moqtada Al Sadr on Saturday, saying they had seized control of his militia bastion where they suffered an embarrassing setback in late March.
The dawn raid by government troops on the Hayaniya district of Basra was backed by a thunderous bombardment by US warplanes and British artillery.
It came after more intense fighting in Baghdad between security forces and Al Sadr's black-masked militiamen. Police said 12 people had been killed in the Shiite slum of Sadr City and hospitals said they received more than 130 wounded overnight.
Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki's crackdown against Al Sadr's Mahdi Army militia in Basra last month was criticised by US commanders as poorly planned and hasty.
It failed to drive the militia from the streets and sparked battles across the south and in the cleric's Baghdad stronghold of Sadr City. The government dismissed 1,300 soldiers and police for refusing to fight.
Yesterday by contrast, Harith Al Idhari, head of Al Sadr office in Basra, said the militia had not put up any resistance, in observance of a ceasefire declared by the cleric.
Major General Abdul Karim Khalaf, an Interior Ministry spokesman, described the operation as a major success.
"Our troops deployed in all the parts of the [Hayaniya] district and controlled it without much resistance," Khalaf told Reuters. "Now we are working on house-to-house checking. We have made many arrests."
On Friday US forces said they had intelligence suggesting Al Qaida, pushed out of Baghdad and western Iraq last year, was plotting a return to the capital to stage major bomb attacks.
Al Sadr's spokesman in Najaf, Salah Al Ubaidi, said the humanitarian situation in Hayaniya was "tragic".
"They have surrounded the district and are preventing the wounded from going to hospitals. Then they started a ground attack," he told Reuters. "It is a very crowded area and they attacked it with rockets as if it were a military base."
In Baghdad, police described battles that began during sandstorms on Friday in Sadr City as among the heaviest in the capital since the crackdown began.
Lieutenant Colonel Steven Stover, a US military spokesman, said US troops were involved in sporadic clashes that continued on Saturday. US forces killed two fighters.
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