[NYTr] US Special Forces Attack Mahdi Army in Holy City of Karbala

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

International Herald Tribune - Jul 27, 2007
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/07/27/asia/iraq.php


U.S. special forces battle Mahdi Army in holy city of Karbala

By Stephen Farrell

BAGHDAD: American special forces battled Mahdi army militiamen in
Karbala on Friday, calling in a deadly helicopter airstrike during a
rare operation in one of the country's holiest Shiite cities.

The U.S. military said the predawn raid - carried out with Iraqi troops
accompanied by American forces as "advisers" - had captured a
"high-level" rogue member of Moktada al-Sadr's militia and two of his
aides, killing 17 militants in the process.

However, Iraqi hospital officials accused the Americans of killing 9
civilians and wounding 26 others in the Al-Askari district in western
Karbala, 80 kilometers, or 50 miles, south of Baghdad. Sadrist
officials said U.S. forces arrived by air and the battle lasted from
1:30 a.m. until 4 a.m. The governor of Karbala and city council members
immediately denounced the strike, saying it had been carried out
without advance consultation, as previously agreed during raids on the
sacred town.

The U.S. military said the soldiers had called in the air attack after
coming under heavy fire from small arms, machine guns and
rocket-propelled grenades as they tried to leave.

The military said the raiding party had killed five insurgents, after
which Mahdi army fighters had "fired on a helicopter assisting the team
in the operation" in the poor neighborhood, which is a Sadrist
stronghold.

"U.S. Special Forces called in precision aerial fires that resulted in
approximately a dozen insurgents killed," a U.S. military statement
said. It disputed the claim of civilian fatalities, saying: "No Iraqi
civilians were present in the area while the strike was performed."

Iraqis in Karbala later identified the detained men as Razzaq al-Samak,
a local Mahdi army leader, and two of his assistants.

Without confirming the identity, the U.S military said he commanded a
rogue Mahdi army "assassination cell" of more than 100 members and had
"allegedly commanded attacks against coalition forces using improvised
explosive devices, explosively formed penetrators and mortars." The
military also accused him of assassinating Iraqi civilians and two
Iraqi government officials.

Iraqi officials said clashes later broke out at nearby Hussain general
hospital between Mahdi army fighters and a joint Iraqi army and police
patrol.

Witnesses said the fighting began around 7 a.m., when Mahdi army
fighters trying to recover wounded people inside the hospital to stop
them from being arrested by U.S. forces fought with Iraqi security
forces at the police post inside the hospital.

Hours later, at Friday prayers in Karbala, Sheik Abdul Hadi
al-Mohammedawi, head of the Sadr office in the city, condemned the U.S.
raid, as did a Sadrist preacher at nearby Kufa who demanded the release
of all the Sadrist "prisoners and detainees arrested by the American
forces."

However, Mohammedawi cautioned his audience not to fight Iraqi soldiers
and police officers. "They are our brothers," he told the congregation
on Friday, the Muslim holy day. "First and last, the Americans are our
enemy."

Further north, coalition troops claimed to have captured four members
of an Iranian-backed arms-smuggling cell in another raid, in the
village of Qasarin in troubled Diyala Province.

"The captured terrorists are suspected of facilitating the transport of
weapons and personnel from Iran into Iraq," a U.S. military statement
said. "The captured terrorists are also believed to have facilitated
the flow of deadly Explosively-Formed Projectiles [EFPs] into Iraq from
Iran to be used against Coalition Forces."