BAGHDAD — A fierce gunbattle broke out after a joint U.S.-Iraqi force arrested a rogue Shi’ite militia leader in Karbala yesterday, leading to an air strike and the deaths of 17 militants, the military said.
U.S. troops also captured four militants suspected of links to networks that smuggle weapons and fighters from Iran, which Washington accuses of spurring the violence in Iraq with its support of Shi’ite militias.
The U.S. military promised to crack down on Shi’ite militias, which are blamed for thousands of execution-style killings and roadside bombings, as well as on Sunni extremists usually blamed for suicide attacks and other bombings.
Militia violence declined after radical Shi’ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr ordered his fighters to lay low when a U.S.-Iraqi security crackdown began in February. But such attacks recently increased out of frustration over frequent raids against Sheik al-Sadr’s supporters and the failure of security forces to stop bombings that target Shi’ites.
In the Shi’ite holy city of Karbala, 50 miles south of Baghdad, the joint force moved in before dawn to detain a man described as the commander of a breakaway group of Sheik al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia, along with two other suspects.
The raid went smoothly, but the troops came under fire as they left with their prisoners, the military said. Attackers fired small arms, machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades from three locations and five militants were killed in the fighting that followed, the military said.
Militants fired on a helicopter assisting the operation, prompting U.S. special forces to call in attack aircraft, which carried out a strike that killed about a dozen more militants, the U.S. military said.
The military said no civilians were in the area, but local Iraqi officials said nine persons were killed, including four militiamen and five civilians, and 23 persons were wounded.
The military said their main target was a Mahdi Army assassination cell that broke off from the group loyal to Sheik al-Sadr. The military accused the man, whom it did not name, of being behind roadside bomb and mortar attacks against U.S. forces, as well as the assassination of two Iraqi government officials.
A local policeman and a council member said a militia leader named Razzaq al-Ardhi was detained along with his brother.
The raid against weapons-smuggling networks took place in the village of Qasarin, 10 miles north of Baqouba in Diyala province. A military statement said the operation targeted a “highly sought operative believed to be a senior leader of a weapons smuggling network.” But it said he was not among the four men captured.
The military announced separately that a U.S. soldier was killed Thursday by a roadside bomb in Diyala, where an operation is under way against a volatile mix of Sunni and Shi’ite extremists.
In other violence, at least 21 persons were killed or found dead nationwide on the Islamic day of rest, including five in a roadside bombing in Muqdadiyah, 60 miles north of Baghdad.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.