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US fights Mahdi Army northeast of Baghdad
American soldiers clashed Wednesday with Shiite militiamen in two cities south of the capital, killing at least eight of them, U.S. officials said. Mortars and rockets fell on widely scattered areas of the Iraqi capital. U.S. officials reported no American casualties during engagements in the Shiite holy cities of Karbala and Najaf, but the command said one 1st Infantry Division soldier was killed Tuesday during an ambush near Muqdadiyah northeast of Baghdad. U.S. military officials said the eight Shiite gunmen were killed in Karbala, 50 miles south of here, during scattered clashes between coalition forces and militiamen loyal to radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. Most of the fighting took place around the Mukhaiyam mosque, which al-Sadr's forces had been using as a base. U.S. F-16 fighter jets flew overhead but did not fire, according to Capt. Noel Gorospe, a spokesman for the 1st Armored Division. A U.S. M1A1 main battle tank was struck by a rocket-propelled grenade late Wednesday but there were no casualties, the military said.

In Najaf, about 50 miles south of Karbala, strong explosions could be heard late Wednesday along with the rattle of machine gun fire. Fighters from al-Sadr's al-Mahdi Army were seen on the streets despite a call Tuesday by the premier Shiite leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani, for both the Americans and the militia to vacate the city.

Meanwhile, a mortar shell exploded Wednesday about 300 yards from the Baghdad Convention Center, where a court-martial hearing was under way for four U.S. soldiers accused in the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison. There were no casualties and the hearing continued without interruption. One of the four soldiers, Spc. Jeremy C. Sivits, pleaded guilty to four counts and was sentenced to a year in jail, reduction in rank and a bad conduct discharge. Bush told an Iraqi newspaper in an interview published Thursday that America intends to get to the bottom of the scandal over mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners so that the "whole world" will know who was responsible. Bush told the Baghdad daily Azzaman that the torture and sexual humiliation of prisoners "does not reflect the behavior of the United States and the American people." White House officials said Bush gave the interview Tuesday in Washington. Its publication in Arabic was delayed because of time zone differences. It was posted early Thursday on the newspaper's Web site.

Meanwhile, a projectile exploded Wednesday near a bridge leading to the Green Zone, igniting a fire. Blasts were also reported in southern Baghdad and near a former Iraqi security agency office. There was no report of casualties. Fighting in Karbala and Najaf has persisted despite demands from Shiite communities in Lebanon and Iran for the Americans to withdraw so as not to harm religious shrines, among the most sacred in Shia Islam.
If they were that important to the gunnies, they'd find someplace else to stage their insurrection, wouldn't they?
In Tehran, tens of thousands of Iranians protested the U.S. military presence in the Iraqi holy cities. Some of them hurled stones and firebombs at the British Embassy. The protest was the largest in a series of demonstrations this week against U.S. moves in Iraq. Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Wednesday that the fighting in Iraq will "bring America closer, step by step, to the precipice," the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported. "They (Americans) thought they could easily win this complicated game. But definitely they won't win. They will experience the bitter taste of defeat," IRNA quoted Khamenei as saying.
Posted by: Dan Darling 2004-05-20
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=33461