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Clashes between Iraqi Shiites leave at least 18 wounded
Khaleej Times(AFP)
14 October 2003
BAGHDAD - Clashes between rival Shiite groups left at least 18 people injured in Iraq’s holy city of Karbala, further fueling tension on Monday in the war-ravaged country that remains plagued by violence six months after the ouster of strongman Saddam Hussein.
The shootout occurred when about 100 members of firebrand cleric Moqtada Sadr’s Mehdi Army militia tried to seize control of the mausoleums of seventh century religious figures Abbas and Hussein in the Shiite holy city of Karbala, 110 kilometers (70 miles) southwest of Baghdad.
They were pushed back to a nearby mosque and later dislodged by supporters of Sheikh Ali Sistani, a leading member of the Hawza, Iraq’s highest Shiite authority, an AFP reporter at the scene said.
The incident further jarred nerves in this country shattered by war and continuing attacks on US-led coalition troops and Iraqi officials.
Three US soldiers have been killed since Sunday in areas north of Baghdad considered the main flashpoints of the violence.
The soldiers were all from the US 4th Infantry division, which is engaged in a search for Saddam and his surviving supporters in a 26,250-square-kilometer (16,000-square-mile) area that encompasses Ojah, the ousted dictator’s birthplace.
“We’re not going to give him the opportunity to regroup his forces; we need to keep him off balance,” Major Troy Smith, the commanding officer of the 4th Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade said on Monday.
US Commerce Secretary Donald Evans, who arrived in Baghdad on Monday night for a three-day visit, played down the impact of the attacks on American forces.
“Certainly security will remain an issue and in the long term you cannot have real domestic security without economic security,” Evans said.
But he insisted: “When you look at the big picture, the progress of reconstruction of infrastructure, the opening of the hospitals and the schools, and the hope that it’s putting in people’s lives, that far outweighs, far overpowers and dwarfs isolated terrorist attacks.”
Noting that electrical power was back above the level it was before the US-led war on Iraq, and how hundreds of thousands of children were returning to school, Evans stressed: “We’ve made great progress.
“More work needs to be done and we’re not going to leave until all the work is done -- and all the work done needs a stable environment for the economy.
“I think we will be able to be back to America and talk to American business, and give them a very credible assessment of the opportunities here,” he added. “I want to encourage foreign direct investment from other parts of the world.”
Evans was set to meet Iraqi students and businessmen on Tuesday and was later this week scheduled for talks with industry and mines minister Mohammad Tufik Rahim and oil minister Ibrahim Mohammad Bahr al-Ulum.
The oil minister on Sunday escaped an assassination attempt when his motorcade was fired on without causing any casualties.
The incident came just hours after a car bombing outside the Baghdad Hotel, which the coalition said killed eight people, including four Iraqi armed guards and two civilians.
Several people were arrested in the attack, according to the coalition.
But Smith stressed the war was still continuing.
“Clearly we are in a fight, the war is not over,” he said, adding that his troops were determined to keep up the pressure on Saddam and his followers.
Smith said US forces had information that Saddam was in the area, and believed he still might be.
“We have a clear indication that Saddam was here,” he said in reference to the area patrolled by the 4th Infantry Division.
“We have to assume he’s in our area,” he said. “It would be logical to think he’s around here.”
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| Earth, a planet hungry for peace |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03). |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03). |
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