Iraqi official linked to death squads is held

BAGHDAD -- US-backed Iraqi forces stormed the Health Ministry and arrested the number two official there yesterday, accusing him of diverting millions of dollars to the biggest Shi'ite militia and allowing death squads use of ambulances and government hospitals to carry out kidnappings and killings.

Shi'ite politicians allied with anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr denounced the arrest of Deputy Health Minister Hakim al- Zamili as a violation of Iraqi sovereignty, and demanded that the prime minister intervene to win his release.

But Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and his senior advisers remained silent. Maliki, a Shi'ite, is under strong US pressure to crack down on Shi'ite militias and has pledged not to interfere in the security operation to rid Baghdad's streets of gunmen from both Islamic sects.

The arrest took place at 9 a.m., an hour after Iraqi government offices generally open. Iraqi troops pushed through the iron gates of the Health Ministry building in northern Baghdad, ordered people to drop to the ground and rushed to Zamili's ground-floor office, witnesses said.

One of Zamili's bodyguards said American soldiers accompanying the force asked everyone to step aside and approached the deputy minister, who introduced himself. A US soldier handcuffed Zamili and led him away, the guard said. A US military statement did not mention Zamili by name but said Iraqi special troops captured a senior official suspected of corruption and links to Sadr's Mahdi Army militia. The Health Ministry is among six Cabinet posts controlled by Sadr.

The statement also alleged the senior official played a role in the deaths of several ministry officials, including the Sunni director of health in Diyala Province. The director, Ali al-Mahdawi, vanished in June after traveling to Baghdad for a meeting at the ministry.

According to the statement, Zamili was believed to have siphoned millions of dollars from the ministry to the Mahdi Army.

US military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Christopher Garver said militiamen were also allowed to use government hospitals and clinics to gather information on Iraqis seeking treatment and "those Iraqis that were discovered to be Sunnis would later be targeted for attacks."

American officials had long contended that Sadr's followers were transforming hospitals into bases for the Mahdi militia and were diverting medicine from state clinics to health care facilities run by the cleric's movement.

The clinics helped Sadr build a powerful nationwide political movement.

The arrest is likely to add new strains to Maliki's fragile coalition as it embarks on a high-risk campaign to curb violence in Baghdad. Nasr al-Rubaie, leader of the Sadrist bloc in Parliament, called Zamili's arrest a kidnapping.

Curbing the militias is considered key to halting the wave of Sunni-Shi'ite reprisal killings that surged after last year's bombing of a Shi'ite shrine in the mostly Sunni city of Samarra.

Despite recent efforts, there were few signs of the violence receding.

At least 104 people were killed or found dead yesterday in Iraq, including at least 10 Sunni men gunned down in the village of Rufayaat, just east of Balad.

In the day's deadliest attack, a bomb in a parked car exploded at a food market in the predominantly Shi'ite town of Aziziyah, 35 miles southeast of Baghdad, killing 20 people and wounding 45, police said.

Another car bomb tore through a minibus in the mainly Shi'ite Amin neighborhood of southeastern Baghdad, killing seven passengers and wounding 10, police said.

In Anbar Province west of Baghdad, a US airstrike killed 13 insurgents in a raid on two safe houses where intelligence showed foreign fighters were assembled.

Also yesterday, the United States announced that four US Marines were killed the day before fighting in Anbar, an insurgent stronghold. At least 3,114 members of the US military have died since the Iraq war started in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.