U.S. and Iraqi special forces killed at least 16 followers of the Shiite Muslim cleric Moqtada al-Sadr on Sunday in a twilight assault on what the U.S. military said was a “terrorist cell” responsible for attacks on soldiers and civilians.
Aides to Sadr, who is backed by one of the country’s largest and most feared militias, said those killed were innocents praying in the al-Moustafa mosque in the Shaab neighborhood, well north of Adhamiyah, when the assault began at 6 p.m.
The U.S. military said in a statement that “no mosques were entered or damaged during this operation.” The military also said U.S. forces came under fire as the raid began and then returned fire. It was impossible to verify where the raid took place because of the nightly government-imposed curfew that began at 8 p.m., hours before news of the incident broke.
The killings further inflamed an already volatile political situation as Iraqi leaders struggle to form a new government in the face of mounting sectarian violence. An outspoken opponent of the U.S. presence in Iraq, Sadr has become a potent political force, fielding more than 30 loyal members in Iraq’s new parliament. The incident Sunday was one of the deadliest encounters between his followers and U.S. and Iraqi forces since his Mahdi Army militia waged two violent uprisings in 2004.
Maliki blamed the incident on U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, who has accused the Mahdi Army of carrying out a slew of recent killings in the wake of the bombing last month of a revered Shiite mosque in Samarra, north of Baghdad.
In a statement read by a government spokesman on al-Iraqiya, Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jafari called for calm and said he had discussed the incident with Gen. George W. Casey Jr., commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, who Jafari said had “promised to investigate.”
“We call upon the sons of our people to be aware of what is being plotted against the country,” Jafari said. “We hope that they will enjoy patience till the conclusion of the ongoing, immediate investigations.”
An aide to Jafari, who was endorsed by Sadr’s political wing to retain his job in the next government but is opposed by other Iraqi factions, said the government was not notified about the raid in advance.
“The incident has injured the whole political process,” said the aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity, referring to the deliberations about the composition of the next government that have deadlocked since elections in December.
Also in Baghdad, U.S. and Iraqi forces stormed an Interior Ministry detention facility and found 17 foreign prisoners. News services reported that as many as 40 police officers were detained in the operation, which came after pledges by U.S. commanders to crack down on abuse of detainees following recent disclosures of torture in at least two Iraqi-run prisons.
The aide to Jafari said that no evidence of torture was found and that the prisoners included Sudanese, Egyptians and other Arab nationals, all of whom were awaiting deportation because they lacked proper identification. A U.S. military spokesman, Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, said he had “no releasable information” on the incident.
Elsewhere in Iraq, army and medical officials in Diyala province, northeast of Baghdad, said 30 headless bodies were discovered at 6:30 p.m. in a deserted brush area in Tarfiya, a village outside Baqubah, 35 miles from the capital.
Tariq Shallal Hiyali, deputy director of the provincial health department, said all of the bodies were male.
In an unrelated case also in Diyala province, a source in the Iraqi Interior Ministry said Sunday that a security officer had been arrested about three days earlier and charged with heading a criminal gang whose members dressed as security officers to kidnap and kill people. The official, who would not be quoted by name, identified the arrested man as Arkan Mohammed al-Bawi, 32. He said Bawi had confessed during interrogation that his gang members wore police uniforms stolen during attacks on police checkpoints and that they had killed “many people.”
The Reuters news service reported that Bawi was a police major and that his brother is the chief of police in Diyala province.
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