BAGHDAD, May 6 (Reuters) - Iraqi soldiers detained dozens of policemen and closed down a hospital suspected of treating Shi'ite militiamen in a Baghdad stronghold of cleric Moqtada al -Sadr's Mehdi Army, Iraqi security officials said on Tuesday.Iraqi and U.S. security forces have been battling Mehdi Army fighters in Baghdad since late March. The upsurge in violence has underscored the fragility of Iraq's security at a time when U.S. troops in the capital are reducing their numbers.
The U.S. military announced that the third of five combat brigades sent to Iraq last year to help curb sectarian violence had begun withdrawing. The brigades have been credited with helping to reduce violence. The military said it expected to complete the withdrawal of about 3,500 troops within the next several weeks under a wider plan to draw down 20,000 troops by July.
The announcement will likely fuel debate about the ability of Iraq's military to step into the breach. Iraqi soldiers have performed with mixed results in the street battles with Sadr's militia and have relied heavily on U.S. airpower. Since the Iraqis do not have a combat Air Force that makes sense. The US soldiers rely heavily on air power. Another Rooters twit.
Most of the recent fighting has been concentrated in Sadr City, a sprawling, densely packed slum of about 2 million people where the anti-American Sadr has a strong following, but Iraqi army units on Monday raided Shula district in northern Baghdad. The soldiers detained 42 policemen suspected of collaborating with "outlaws" on Tuesday, an officer of Baghdad's security spokesman Major-General Qassim Moussawi's office said. Iraq's police are seen being as infiltrated by Shi'ite militiamen, using the cover of their uniforms to mount attacks.
The soldiers also raided the Mohammed-Bakr Hakim hospital, arresting 35 workers, including orderlies and cleaners, and forced its closure, said hospital head Dr. Yassin al-Rikabi. Well, there goes all of Rooters unnamed sources. Reuters Television footage showed empty corridors and beds in the hospital, which workers was suspected of treating wounded Mehdi Army fighters.
"We don't have any staff to receive patients," Rikabi told Reuters. Patients had been transferred to another hospital.
"At 9 a.m., around 40 soldiers and their officers stormed the hospital ... They beat some people, including me," he added. Baghdad security forces confirmed the raid, which prompted dozens of hospital staff to protest outside the Health Ministry.
ELECTION LAW PRESENTED IN PARLIAMENT
Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki launched a crackdown on militias including the Mehdi Army in late March. Maliki says the offensive is to disarm militias, but Sadr's followers see it as an effort to sideline the cleric's mass movement before provincial elections in October.
A draft law that outlines how those elections will be conducted had its first reading in parliament on Tuesday. The draft includes a clause that bans any party from taking part in the polls if they have a militia. Few analysts expect Sadr to disarm the Mehdi Army, putting the prime minister and the cleric on a collision course ahead of the Oct. 1 vote. A parliamentary official said he expected a second reading of the bill within a week, which could lead to amendments.
The Sadrist movement boycotted the last provincial elections in January 2005 and is expected to do well at the expense of other parties backing Maliki, especially in the Shi'ite south.
The law is part of a raft of legislation the United States hopes will reconcile Iraq's divided sectarian and ethnic groups. The most important piece of legislation, an oil law that will determine how oil revenue will be shared and open the door to foreign investment, has been stalled for more than a year.
The U.S. military dismissed media reports that a well-known Mehdi Army brigade commander, Arkan Hasnawi, had died after being wounded in a U.S. missile strike in Sadr City on Saturday. Reports of his death spread like wildfire through the slum on Tuesday, but there was scepticism among residents who saw them as a bid to fool the Americans into thinking he was dead. U.S. military spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Steven Stover said a U.S. missile strike near a hospital in Sadr City on Saturday was aimed at "special group" militias linked to Iran.