BAGHDAD (Agencies): Radical cleric Muqtada Sadr says he will not enter any political process that would allow US forces to remain in Iraq. Sadr also denounces US Defense Secretary Robert Gates as a terrorist and says he will never work with Iraq’s occupiers. On Friday, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Sadr was a significant political player due to his large following in Iraq’s Shiite community. Gates also called on Sadr to take part in the political process. Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia has been battling US and Iraqi government troops for more than two weeks. Hundreds have died in the fighting. But in a statement Saturday, Sadr says the Iraqi government must insist on the withdrawal of foreign forces if it wants peace in the country.

Iraq said Saturday militiamen have sown the streets of Baghdad’s Sadr City with booby traps to impede the advance of the security forces, amid fierce battles in the sprawling Shiite enclave. The warning came soon after the partial lifting of a vehicle ban that has been in force during two weeks of bitter fighting between US and Iraqi forces and the Mahdi Army militia of  al-Sadr. “Groups of people have planted roadside bombs on the majority of the roads of Sadr City,” Baghdad military command said in a statement. “For the protection of our citizens and media personnel, we are warning people to stay off the streets until they have been cleared by the security forces,” it said.

Battles for control of Sadr City raged again through the night killing 13 people, according to the US military, bringing the toll in the past week alone to around 90. The US military also announced the death on Saturday of another soldier in Baghdad, bringing to at least 13 the number of troops killed in the capital in the past week. Residents of impoverished Shiite bastion reported that the fighting died down during the day with only occasional bursts of gunfire punctuating the calm. They said the main road into Sadr City remained closed and major thoroughfares blocked, forcing motorists to use sidestreets to zig-zag their way through the district, which has a population of two million.

A US military statement listed the dead in the overnight battles as two snipers, two “criminals” firing rocket-propelled grenades, six gunmen wielding machine guns and automatic weapons, and three men placing roadside bombs. The US and Iraqi forces hit back with small-arms fire, a Hellfire missile fired from an unmanned aircraft and artillery shells blasted from a M1A2 Abrams tank, the statement said.

Air Strike
Residents showed an AFP photographer a house in the Jamila sector of Sadr City which they said had been hit during an air strike. Neighbours said two small children and their parents were killed and another five family members wounded in the strike. Hospital officials said women and children were among those killed and wounded but declined to give a breakdown. An official in the office of government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh told AFP that a two-week vehicle ban in Sadr City had been eased. “The curfew was lifted generally in Sadr City from this morning, but it still applies in some areas where security measures are in place,” the official said, asking not to be named.

Tensions between the Mahdi Army and the security forces have been further inflamed by the killing of senior Sadr aide Riyad al-Nuri on Friday in an attack carried out in broad daylight after the main weekly Muslim prayers in the Shiite holy city of Najaf. Sadr has called for three days of mourning in all his movement’s offices, while a symbolic funeral procession for Nuri was held in Sadr City on Saturday morning. The US statement said Friday night’s clashes began when a security force convoy was attacked “by multiple roadside bombs, and small-arms fire.”

In fierce clashes that continued for an hour, Iraqi and US forces came under attack by snipers, gunmen armed with automatic weapons and machine guns, as well as by roadside bombs and rocket-propelled grenades. During the fighting, US forces in an Abrams tank fired two 122mm rounds killing at least two people. A US drone also fired a Hellfire missile at a group of people suspected of planting roadside bombs, killing three, the statement said. Mahdi Army militiamen have been battling Iraqi troops since March 25, when Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki ordered a crackdown on militiamen in the southern city of Basra. Around 800 people have been killed in the fighting, which first broke out in Basra but quickly spread to other Shiite areas of Iraq.

The battles subsided after Sadr pulled his fighters off the streets on March 30, but fighting erupted in greater fury a week later in Sadr City when Iraqi and US forces began new operations in the sprawling township.

Iraqi soldiers acting on tips from detained Shiite militiamen found 14 bodies Saturday that had been buried in a field south of Baghdad, officials said. It was the second discovery this week of mass graves in the area, raising to 44 the number of bodies located by Iraqi troops. Twelve bodies found Saturday had been dumped in one grave about 500 meters (yards) away from the local office of Sadr’s movement, while two others were buried together in a nearby area on the western outskirts of Mahmoudiya, a city spokesman said. The spokesman, Ather Kamil, said the bodies were found after members of al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia were detained and confessed to killing and burying dozens of Sunnis as well as some Shiites killed for criminal purposes.

The grisly discoveries came two days after the Iraqi troops found the remains of 30 people believed to have been killed more than a year ago in three abandoned houses elsewhere in the area. An Iraqi army officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to release the information, also said the bodies were found after the recent arrests of several Shiite militiamen who provided information about where to find the bodies. Iraqi soldiers continued to comb the palm tree-lined desert area as the search for more bodies continued on Saturday. Several black-clad women whose loved ones disappeared amid the fierce sectarian bloodletting that reached a peak last year rushed to the field after hearing that more bodies had been found on Saturday. Associated Press photos showed US soldiers providing cover as the Iraqi troops took the bodies away in plastic bags.

Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein begins his third year in US military detention Saturday with the bulk of accusations against him dropped by Iraqi judges and press freedom groups renewing calls for his release. But the Pentagon said Hussein will be held until it reviews the Iraqi amnesty ruling and also said it reserves the option to ignore the decision and keep Hussein in custody. A four-judge Iraqi judicial panel on Monday halted terrorism-related proceedings against Hussein, saying his case falls under Iraq’s 2-month-old amnesty law. The law — which was supported by Washington — allows the amnesty panel to effectively close a case without making findings of guilt or innocence. Press freedom groups have hailed the decision and appealed for the immediate release of Hussein, 36, who has been in custody since his arrest by US Marines on April 12, 2006, in Ramadi, about 70 miles (113 kilometers) west of Baghdad.

President George W. Bush, defending his decision to halt withdrawals of US troops after July, said Saturday that Iraqis are shouldering more responsibility for securing their future. The United States will stay on the offense, support the Iraqi security forces and move toward an oversight role, Bush said in his latest effort to garner support for the unpopular war. He used his Saturday radio address to promote his war policy, even though his approval rating hit a new low of 28 percent in an AP-Ipsos polling this week. The president on Thursday said he would heed the advice of his top commander in Iraq, Gen David Petraeus. After the current drawdown of US troops ends in July, Petraeus wants 45 days to evaluate security — followed by an indefinite period to reassess US troop strength in Iraq, where flare-ups of extremist violence are threatening to undercut security gains.

“I’ve told him he’ll have time he needs to make his assessment,” Bush said. That stance guarantees a heavy American military presence in Iraq for the rest of Bush’s presidency as the war grinds through its sixth year. The current total of 160,000 troops is scheduled to shrink to about 140,000 by the end of July.

The growing cost to the United States of fighting the war in Iraq “is not only linked to our economic skid, but is a leading cause of it,” a Democratic congressman said Saturday. Rep John Yarmuth linked the costly and unpopular war with the growing economic troubles – some say recession – in this country. Yarmuth said in the Democrats’ weekly radio address that the testimony this week of Gen David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker about the Iraq war served as reminder of the billions of dollars being poured into Iraq as the US economy struggles. “General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker failed to offer a plan to change direction in Iraq and redeploy our troops,” Yarmuth said. “Instead, they offered more of the same, with US troops and taxpayers paying the price.”

Recent violence in Basra has convinced the administration of President Bush that Iran and not al-Qaeda is now the primary threat to US interests in Iraq, The Washington Post said Saturday.  Citing unnamed senior US officials, the newspaper said this view has sparked a broad reassessment of Washington’s policy in the region and prompted Defense Secretary Gates to speak about Tehran’s “malign” influence there. During their Washington visit, Petraeus, the top US military commander in Iraq, and Ambassador Ryan Crocker barely mentioned al-Qaeda in Iraq but spoke extensively of Iran, the paper said. With “al-Qaeda in retreat and disarray” in Iraq “we see other obstacles that were under the waterline more clearly.. The Iranian-armed militias are now the biggest threat to internal order,” the Post quoted one official as saying. As a result of this new approach, the administration has initiated an inter-agency assessment of what is known about Iranian activities and intentions and how to combat them, the report said.  President Bush for his part reiterated, in an interview with ABC News, that if Iran continues to help militias in Iraq, “then we’ll deal with them.” 

Also:
VIENNA: The security firm that employed an Austrian found dead after being kidnapped in Iraq along with four Americans has denied that it received a ransom demand for him, a magazine reported.
Bert Nussbaumer was kidnapped in late 2006, and the Austrian government announced last month that his body had been found. A person close to the American victims has claimed Crescent Security received a ransom demand of $150,000 (95,000 euros) several hours after the kidnapping near Basra. “We would have paid right away,” Paul Chapman, a spokesman for the firm, told profil magazine in its edition to appear Monday.

“We handed over much more money to Iraqi informers following the kidnapping, hoping that they could engage in negotiations to free the hostages.” Three of the Americans have also been found dead, while the fifth security agent remains missing. An Austrian investigator told the magazine that neither the country’s authorities nor the security firm had been in direct contact with the kidnappers. In late March, Austrian media reported that the security agents were kidnapped to force Crescent Security to pay to have its trucks returned after they were taken by a local militia. (AFP)