NAJAF, Iraq, (Agencies)
The movement of Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr said on Saturday it had struck a deal with the Iraqi government to end fighting in its Baghdad stronghold of Sadr City, after overnight clashes killed 13 people there.
Sheikh Salah al-Obeidi, the spokesman for the cleric's office in the central shrine city of Najaf, said the deal will be effective from Sunday.
"We will stop the fire, stop displaying arms in public and open all the roads leading to Sadr City," Obeidi told AFP.
"This agreement will be executed from tomorrow. The Sadr movement has agreed to the contents of the deal and it has now become an official document."
Obeidi said the agreement was reached after talks between the Sadr group and a delegation representing the government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.
"The two groups agreed on 10 of the 14 points discussed. The agreed points do not include disbanding of Jaish al-Mahdi," he said referring to the cleric's feared Mahdi Army militia.
The declaration came only hours after at least 13 people were killed in renewed fighting between U.S. forces and Shiite militiamen in Sadr City, as clerics there hit out at the Shiite religious leadership for turning a blind eye to the deadly offensive.
The U.S. military launched air strikes against suspected militia targets in the vast slum district of some two million people throughout the night, Iraqi medics and security officials said.
"Every 10 minutes or so we heard explosions," said Sadr City resident Hussein Kadhim, 35. "Last night must have been one of the worst nights of fighting in the past month."
A medical source at the Al-Sadr hospital said 77 people were also wounded in the fighting. All of the dead were men but the wounded included women and children. There was no immediate word from the U.S. military.
Since March 25, U.S. and Iraqi forces have been battling militants in Sadr City, mostly from the Mahdi Army militia of anti-American Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. Hundreds of people have died. |
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Sistani under fire An aide to Sadr used his sermon at the main weekly prayers in Sadr City on Friday to criticize Shiite spiritual leader Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani for not speaking out against the death toll from the clashes in the district.
"We are surprised by the silence in Najaf," the central shrine city where the Shiite religious hierarchy is based, Sheikh Sattar Battat said.
"For 50 days, Sadr City has been bombed... Children, women and old people have been killed by all kinds of U.S. weapons, and Najaf remains silent."
Battat complained that there had been no religious decree from the Shiite hierarchy criticizing the assault by U.S. and Iraqi government troops on Shiite fighters. "For us this means that Najaf accepts the massacre in Sadr City," he said.
There was no immediate reaction to the criticism from Sistani's office.
Battat also lashed out at Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki who sparked the current round of fighting by ordering an offensive against Shiite militias in the main southern city of Basra on March 25.
"What the government is doing is a crime against the people," Battat said, accusing the prime minister of "murdering people with the help of a foreign state."
However, a spokesman for Sadr in Najaf, Salah Al-Obeidi, said talks were being held with Maliki's government. "There are talks underway with the Iraqi government to end the crisis," Obeidi told AFP.
Maliki's government, which is also dominated by Shiites, wants to disband Sadr's militia before October provincial elections. The Sadr movement says it needs its weapons for self-defense until other Shiite and Sunni groups nurtured by the U.S. military and the Baghdad government are also disarmed. |
