Shiite militias battle in Basra
BAGHDAD, Iraq – Clashes between rival Shiite Muslim militias erupted Wednesday in Basra, Iraq’s second-largest city, when scores of gunmen stormed the governor’s office after accusing his supporters of assassinating their tribal leader, while car bombs in Baghdad killed 25 people.
The gunmen in Basra, a predominantly Shiite city, laid siege to the office for two hours, lobbing mortars and barricading nearby bridges, before British troops and Iraqi police pushed them back. The fighting left at least four policemen dead, police said. Authorities imposed an indefinite curfew on the city.
As U.S. and Iraqi forces focus their efforts on taming sectarian violence in Baghdad, Wednesday’s bloodshed served as a reminder of the tenuous security condition across Iraq, and how precariously the country teeters on the edge of civil war.
In once calm southern cities such as Basra and Karbala, a Shiite holy city, fighting between Shiite militias and U.S.-backed Iraqi security forces, as well as among rival Shiite militias, appears to be on the rise.
Tensions are also rising between U.S. and Iraqi forces and the powerful anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who is emerging as the main Shiite obstacle to U.S. efforts to establish order and security in Baghdad as well as in the south.
Many of the militias are affiliated with radicalized clerics or political parties in Iraq’s fragile coalition government. Some leaders, such as Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, head of the influential Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, have called for neighborhood militias to provide security, a move that would strengthen their power base.
On Tuesday, the deputy governor of Najaf, Abdul Hussain Abtan, who is an al-Hakim follower, advocated the creation of such self-defense units and said he would begin selecting candidates to head them, according to reports in Iraqi media.
Asked whether the recent militia fighting in the south was coordinated and potentially destabilizing for the country, U.S. military spokesman Maj. Gen. William Caldwell replied: “I don’t have the complete picture to give you right now, but it did not appear to be anything that was out of control. It appeared to be something that was being brought back under control.”
Lately, though, the Shiite-dominated south appears to be spiraling into an abyss of violence, fueled largely by power struggles within the religious sect.
In Karbala, fierce gunbattles erupted Tuesday between the followers of radical cleric Mahmoud Sarkhi al-Hassani and Iraqi security forces who raided his office, leaving seven people dead. The clashes quickly spread to nearby towns. The crackdown on al-Hassani came after his followers apparently tried to take over several districts in Karbala, authorities said.