US-led force battles Shi'ite militia in Iraq after leader's arrest

BAGHDAD -- A fierce gunbattle broke out after a joint US-Iraqi force arrested a Shi'ite militia leader in Karbala yesterday, leading to an airstrike and the deaths of 17 militants, the military said.

US troops also captured four militants suspected of links to networks that smuggle weapons and fighters from Iran, which Washington accuses of fueling the violence in Iraq with its support of Shi'ite militias.

The US military has promised to crack down on Shi'ite militias, which have been blamed for thousands of execution-style killings and roadside bombings, as well as on Sunni extremists usually blamed for suicide attacks and other bombings.

Militia violence declined after radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr ordered his fighters to lay low when a US-Iraqi security crackdown began in February. But such attacks have recently increased out of frustration over frequent raids against Sadr's supporters and the failure of security forces to stop bombings that target Shi'ites.

In the Shi'ite holy city of Karbala, 50 miles south of Baghdad, the joint force moved in before dawn to detain a man described as the commander of a breakaway group of Sadr's Mahdi Army militia, along with two other suspects.

The raid went smoothly, but the troops came under fire as they left with their prisoners, the military said. Attackers fired small arms, machine guns, and rocket-propelled grenades from three locations and five militants were killed in the fighting that followed, the military said.

Militants fired on a helicopter assisting the operation, prompting US special forces to call in attack aircraft, which launched a strike that killed about a dozen more militants, the US military said.

The military said no civilians were in the area, but local Iraqi officials said nine people were killed, including four militiamen and five civilians, and 23 people were wounded.

The military said their main target was a Mahdi Army assassination cell that had broken off from the group loyal to Sadr. The military accused the man, whom it did not name, of being behind roadside bomb and mortar attacks against US forces, as well as the assassination of two Iraqi government officials.

A local police officer and a council member said a militia leader named Razzaq al-Ardhi had been detained along with his brother.

The officials said another clash erupted between militiamen and a passing Iraqi patrol about three hours later in Karbala as mourners were removing bodies from the hospital. No casualties were reported.

US and Iraqi officials have said they are unsure of the degree of control the anti-American cleric exerts over his militia, which he founded in 2003 after the collapse of Saddam Hussein's rule.

The Mahdi Army engaged in fierce battles with US troops in 2004, but last year Sadr complained publicly about "deviant" groups using his organization as a cover for murder, extortion, and smuggling.

The raid against weapons-smuggling networks took place in the village of Qasarin, 10 miles north of Baqubah in Diyala Province. A military statement said the operation targeted a "highly sought operative believed to be a senior leader of a weapons smuggling network." But it said he was not among the four men captured.

The men were suspected of helping to smuggle fighters and weapons including armor-piercing bombs known as explosively formed penetrators.

In other violence yesterday, at least 21 people were killed or found dead nationwide, including five in a roadside bombing in Muqdadiyah, 60 miles north of Baghdad.

The military announced separately that a US soldier was killed Thursday by a roadside bomb in Diyala, where an operation is underway against a volatile mix of Sunni and Shi'ite extremists.

As part of that effort, US and Iraqi forces recently struck an alliance with Sunni insurgent groups and tribal leaders opposed to Al Qaeda in Iraq.

A representative of Iraq's top Shi'ite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, called on the government to broaden the effort beyond Sunnis by rallying all the groups in Diyala to fight the terrorist group jointly.

"We call on the government to form a collective command in Diyala Province from Sunnis, Shi'ites, and Turkoman and other sects of Iraqis to give these operations a national dimension to fight the Al Qaeda organization in the name of Iraq," Sheik Abdul-Mahdi al-Karbalai said in a sermon in Karbala's Imam Hussein mosque hours after the US raid.

In Baghdad, tractors and cranes cleared the debris from Thursday's vehicle bombing and rocket attack on a Shi'ite market district in the capital. Rescue workers pulled three more bodies from the rubble, and police raised the toll to at least 31 people killed and 104 wounded.