"By no longer presenting a static target, we reduce the ability of the militias to strike us," he said. But he rejected Sadr's claim that the British had been defeated and pushed out of Amarah. "It's very difficult to claim a victory without causing significant casualties."

I guess by those standards Israel really won

By HAIDAR HANI, Associated Press Writer
5:54 AM PDT, August 25, 2006

AMARAH, Iraq -- Looters ravaged a former British base Friday, a day after the camp was turned over to Iraqi troops, taking everything from doors and window frames to corrugated roofing and metal pipes, authorities said.

About 1,200 British troops had been stationed at Camp Abu Naji in Amarah, 200 miles southeast of Baghdad, and the base had come under almost daily attack. The troops pulled out Thursday to redeploy along the border with Iran to crack down on weapons smuggling.

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Shortly after the troops pulled out, Iraqi police managed to disperse looters by firing warning shots into the air, said Dhaffar Jabbar, spokesman for the Maysan provincial governor's office. But the looters returned Friday.

"The British forces left Abu Naji and the locals started looting everything," 1st Lt. Rifaat Taha Yaseen of the Iraqi army's 10th Division told AP Television News. "They took everything from the buildings."

Men, some with their faces covered, ripped corrugated metal from roofs, carried off metal pipes and backed trucks into building entrances to load them with wooden planks.

Several Iraqi soldiers, apparently unarmed, did not seem to make any effort to stop the looting.

"There are only few soldiers at Abu Naji camp. Some of the residents were carrying weapons so they (the soldiers) did not want bloodshed and with such a big number, they cannot stop them," Jabbar said.

Lt. Tahseen Abid Ali said the Iraqi army had taken up positions in a corner of the camp, but was unable to stop the looting.

Another officer, 1st Lt. Ammar Karim Ahmed, said the army had seen "hundreds (of looters) coming toward the camp."

"First of all, we tried to stop them, but we saw some them were armed and our forces did not have enough people to stop them," he said.

When asked by a reporter why he was taking material from the base, one man, who refused to give his name, said: "This is war loot and we are allowed to take it."

On Thursday, Iraqi authorities had complained that the British withdrawal had caught them by surprise.

"British forces evacuated the military headquarters without coordination with the Iraqi forces," Jabbar said.

The British military rejected the assertion.

"The handover of the Camp Abu Naji was coordinated with the Amarah authorities 24 hours in advance," said spokesman Maj. Charlie Burbridge.

"It was understood that the governor was likely to use the camp as a police training camp," he said in an e-mail Thursday, adding that Iraqi forces had secured the base after the British soldiers left.

Burbridge said Thursday that British authorities could not comment on early reports of looting "because by that stage the camp was the property of the Maysan authorities and Iraqi Forces were in attendance."

Turkey bombed PKK rebels at Iraqi border -sources
25 Aug 2006 14:48:16 GMT

More TUNCELI, Turkey, Aug 25 (Reuters) - Turkish warplanes bombed Kurdish guerrilla positions in the Iraqi border region earlier this week, military sources said on Friday. Several thousand members of the banned Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) are believed to be hiding in the mountains of mainly Kurdish northern Iraq, from where they slip across the border to attack Turkish police, troops and other targets.

Turkey has repeatedly warned it has the right under international law to conduct cross-border operations if Iraq and the United States fail to crack down on the PKK rebels.

Military sources in southeast Turkey told Reuters two or three warplanes had bombed the Iraqi border region on Wednesday evening after PKK forces were identified in the area.

The sources, who declined to be named, said the action was not significant and it was not clear what damage the bombing had caused. The PKK has not reported any casualties.

The bombing occurred along the borders of Hakkari and Sirnak provinces and it was not clear if any of the bombs actually landed in Iraqi territory, the sources said. more

US tanks shell Iraqi mosque after attack - military
25 Aug 2006 16:38:46 GMT

More BAGHDAD, Aug 25 (Reuters) - U.S. tanks shelled a mosque in the Sunni insurgent stronghold of Ramadi on Friday after coming under rocket-propelled grenade and machinegun fire from the building, the U.S. military said.

A doctor at Ramadi hospital told Reuters three people had been killed and 22 wounded by the U.S. fire, which the U.S. military said was provoked by a "complex attack" that also included hand grenades and improvised explosives.

"Coalition forces returned fire in self defence, using escalation of force procedures, and finally fired several main gun rounds from M1 tanks into the mosque in order to defeat the attackers," the military said in a statement. more

Now in our second season of online Rough Cut videos, we return this week to Iraqi Kurdistan, the subject of our very first Rough Cut back in June 2005. In the original report, Kurdish exile Karzan Sherabayani took us on an emotional journey to his hometown of Kirkuk, where he saw his family for the first time in 25 years and voted in historic elections there.

This time, he returns to investigate Iraq's growing oil crisis and discovers that much has changed in Kirkuk, home to 40 percent of Iraq's oil fields.

"I am shocked at how much the security has deteriorated," Sherabayani says, surveying the wreckage of a car bomb attack that happened hours earlier. "Kirkuk is a crippled city with shortages of water, electricity and fuel." When he tries to film the long lines of vehicles waiting at gas stations all over town, the local police arrest him.

Insurgents have hit three gas stations in the last few days and everyone is nervous. Sherabayani says the increase in violence is not only part of a battle over Kirkuk's oil wealth but an attempt to destabilize the entire region and drag the Kurds into a civil war. "At the moment, the Kurds are the main force to keep Iraq together and build a democratic government," he says.

more at PBS FrontLine, it also has the video report

to use the "the Americans won't leave until we unite" argument to scare Iraqi's into unity....

_{"at some point I'm hopeful I'll figure out something to put here"}

BBC - Iraq's most prominent archaeologist has fled the country and is reported to have said poor security and political pressures forced him out.

Donny George, a Christian, is well known internationally for his efforts to recover Iraq's looted antiquities.

He has said pressure to follow a radical Islamic agenda in the preservation of Iraqi antiquities made his position impossible.

But an Iraqi minister has challenged Mr George's reasons for leaving.

His account of fleeing Iraq comes in a publication called the Art Newspaper. He is reported to have told the paper that he is now in Syria with his family.

Mr George is also said to have told the paper the Iraqi state board of antiquities and heritage, which he presided over, had come under the increasing influence of supporters of radical Shia cleric Moqtada al Sadr, and he had been trying to counter a growing Islamist and anti-Western agenda.

He claimed that people had been put into the antiquities department who were interested only in Islamic sites and not in Iraq's rich earlier heritage.

But these and other reported grievances are being vigorously contested by Iraq's minister of state for antiquities, Liwa Sumaysim, a member of Moqtada al Sada's party.

"These are lies," he said.

The minister insisted that he was interested in all of the archaeology and antiquities of Iraq, not only its Islamic heritage.

And he rejected Mr George's reported claim that the 1400-strong special antiquities protection force was running out of funding, risking further looting at Iraq's thousands of archaeological sites.

The minister said Mr George had left Iraq without telling him, and despite their differences, he said he would be welcome back.

_{"at some point I'm hopeful I'll figure out something to put here"}

Baghdad- The constitutional committee entrusted with formulating a constitution for the autonomous northern Kurdish region of Iraq announced Saturday that it completed the process of drafting the document, which specifies the city of Kirkuk as an integral part of the autonomous region. Awni al-Bazaz, member of the legal committee in the parliament of Kurdistan, described the draft constitution as being more detailed than the Iraqi national constitution.

According to Tareq Jambaz, a member of the Kurdish constitutional committee, the draft contains 158 articles, 15 more than the national constitution.

Al-Bazaz said the provision on the status of Kirkuk was based on and authorized by the Iraqi national constitution regarding the demarcation of the country's regional geographic and administrative borders.

Al-Bazaz also said the draft constitution would serve to extend the borders of Iraqi Kurdistan from the three governorates of Dahuk, Arbil, and Suleimaniya to include cities and towns in the Nineveh, Diyala, and Salahaddin governorates where Kurds are a majority of the population.

The parliament of Kurdistan aspires to have residents of the cities of Kirkuk, Khaniqeen, Sinjar, and Tooz Khormatu - which lie outside the autonomous Kurdish region yet have large Kurdish populations - to be allowed to vote on a regional constitutional referendum.

This proposal has proven controversial amongst Arabs and Turkomen in Kirkuk and elsewhere who argue that this represents an attempted Kurdish land-grab, while Kurds argue that the Saddam Hussein regime had "Arabized" a number of areas which were previously Kurdish.

Al-Bazaz also added that the Iraqi and Kurdish constitutions diverge on some provisions.

One of the points of difference is that the Kurdish draft stipulates a 25 per cent quota for the representation of women, not only in the parliament of Kurdistan but also in local councils.

Al-Bazaz said the draft constitution also asserts the Muslim identity of the majority of people in Kurdistan, stipulates that Islamic law is a primary source of the region's legislation, but also guarantees religious freedom for the region's other faiths, including Christianity and Yazdanism.

The constitutional committee is to submit the draft constitution to Kurdistan Parliamentary President Adnan Mohammad Rashad Mufti and Regional President Masoud Barzani for ratification before the submission of the draft law to a referendum in the upcoming months.

The draft constitution is to organize political, judicial, and legislative measures in the region, said Jambaz, adding that the regional constitution falls in line with the Iraqi national constitution which allows for the country's regions to formulate their own specific constitutions.

Deutsche Presse Agentur
Published: Saturday August 26, 2006
http://rawstory.com/news/2006/Draft_constitution_of_Kurdish_Iraq__08262006.html

David Bier
CADRE Intel Mgr
http://groups.google.com/group/publicintel

Prince Harry may be kept from Iraq
Aug. 26, 2006 at 5:13PM

Prince Harry of Britain, also known as Cornet Harry Wales, may be denied his wish to serve in combat in Iraq with the Household Cavalry.

Harry's older brother, Prince William, is also in the Army. Senior officers say that sending either prince to the front lines could endanger them and their men because they would attract too much attention, the Daily Mail reported.

Harry has said that he does not want to be "wrapped in cotton wool" and threatened to resign from the Army if he is not deployed to Iraq with other members of his unit.

The prince, a second lieutenant or cornet, is now on a training course learning how to lead a small reconnaissance unit in Iraq.

"The truth is that if there is even the slightest chance of Harry's deployment in Iraq leading to an upturn in activity among insurgents looking to bag themselves some headlines by killing a prince, then we would have no option but to seriously re-consider putting him on the ground," a source in the Ministry of Defense told the newspaper.

http://www.washtimes.com/upi/20060826-043043-2163r.htm

Soldiers' families question Rumsfeld on deployment
27 Aug 2006 02:49:42 GMT

By Kristin Roberts

FAIRBANKS, Alaska, Aug 26 (Reuters) - The wives of soldiers whose duty in Iraq was extended to add troop strength to Baghdad peppered U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld with tough questions, some that he could not answer, at a closed-door meeting in Alaska on Saturday.

Rumsfeld, who received a mixed reception from a crowd that offered more applause for the questions asked than the answers provided, praised the 172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team. He would not commit to a date for bringing those soldiers home, but told a 12-year-old girl in the audience, "I'd bet your daddy gets home before Christmas."

He also told the estimated 700 to 800 family members at the meeting in an Army gymnasium that what the soldiers were doing was necessary to ensure terrorism does not strike the United States.

"In five or 10 or 15 years, you'll all be able to look back and appreciate the importance of what's being done and the value of what's being done," he told the crowd.

more
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N26422462.htm

Iraqi PM: Violence Is Decreasing

Sunday August 27, 2006 3:46 PM

AP Photo BAG102

WASHINGTON (AP) - Iraq's prime minister said Sunday that violence was decreasing in his country, despite daily reports of bloodshed and fighting. Nouri al-Maliki insisted that his government was making progress in efforts to combat sectarian clashes between Shiites and Sunnis, and terrorism by Sunni Arab insurgents.

``The violence is not increasing. We're not in a civil war. Iraq will never be in a civil war,'' he said through an interpreter on CNN's Late Edition. ``The violence is in decrease and our security ability is increasing.''

On Sunday, a series of bomb explosions left at least 15 people dead and dozens wounded. That followed 26 killings in dozens of attacks Saturday. Iraqi officials have said about 3,500 Iraqis died violently last month nationwide - the highest monthly tally of the war.

Al-Maliki refused to set a specific timeline for how much longer U.S. troops would be needed in Iraq. Last week, Republican Rep. Chris Shays, a supporter of the war who previously opposed withdrawal timetables, said the United States should consider setting a timeline for troop withdrawals.

``I don't want to commit to a certain time or a certain period, but I want to have my best efforts to decrease this time to a year or less, or a few months,'' Al-Maliki said.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-6040958,00.html

As Iraq fractures, Kurds pull toward more autonomy

By Edward Wong The New York Times
SUNDAY, AUGUST 27, 2006

QARADAGH, Iraq The Kurdish policeman's mother died in 1988 when a boulder crushed her as she fled to Iran after the aerial bombardment of their village. His older brother had been killed earlier, in combat with Saddam Hussein's troops.

"But I don't just hate Saddam," the police officer, Lieutenant Ismail Ibrahim Said, 29, said in this mountain town's station house before the start last week of Saddam's trial on the charge of genocide against the Kurdish minority. "I see it in the new government of Iraq. When they have power, they'll oppress us like Saddam did."

The police officer's sentiments, widely shared across the autonomous Kurdish homeland, reflect a lack of will among many Iraqis to forge a unified nation, and could herald the breakup of the country into three self-governing regions. As Iraq writhes in the grip of Sunni-versus-Shiite violence, a de facto partitioning is taking place. Parts of the country are coming to look more and more like Iraqi Kurdistan, with homogenous armed regions becoming the norm.

But if Kurdistan increasingly portends the future shape of Iraq, it also signals the hazards inherent in a fracturing of the country. American and Iraqi officials agree that the greatest danger to a politically divided Iraq, or to an Iraq riven by civil war, is hostile intervention by the country's neighbors. The resulting regional conflagration could remake the Middle East through mass bloodshed. Here in Kurdistan, interference by border nations is already happening more overtly than elsewhere in the country.

More than a week ago, Iran lobbed artillery shells for several days at villages around Qandil Mountain in the remote north of Iraqi Kurdistan, killing at least two civilians, wounding four and driving scores from the area, said a senior politician, Mustafa Sayed Qadir. Iran has been shelling the area sporadically for months, he said.

Qandil Mountain is a base for militant groups fighting for Kurdish independence or autonomy in Turkey and Iran.

Like Iran, Turkey has been increasing the pressure against Kurds who are pushing for self-governance. This month, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish prime minister, warned Tariq al-Hashemi, an Iraqi vice president and a Sunni Arab, that the Iraqi government needed to take "satisfactory steps" against the Kurdistan Workers Party, a guerrilla group with hideouts in this region. Turkish officials have also warned Iraqi Kurdistan against seizing control of the oil city of Kirkuk.

The top Kurdish politicians in Iraq officially are not pushing for an independent Kurdistan. They are all too aware that a Kurdish nation would draw intense hostility from Turkey, Iran and Syria, which all have Kurdish minorities chafing to raise their own flag. Kurds in those countries and in Iraq have long dreamed of uniting to form the nation of greater Kurdistan, encompassing up to 30 million people and stretching from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean to southern Iraq.

"Both Turkey and Iran are not happy with what's going on in Iraqi Kurdistan - having a special region, having a government, having a Parliament, and so on," said Mahmoud Othman, a senior Kurdish member of the Iraqi Parliament.

"That's why they do those special operations, those bombings. It's a blow against the Kurdish government in Kurdistan."

He added, "We have to be very careful, and we are very careful."

He added, "We have to be very careful, and we are very careful.">more

Aug. 27, 2006email thisprint this
Don't be mad at me, Rumsfeld says
TROOPS VOLUNTEERED, DEFENSE CHIEF SAYS

By Robert Burns
ASSOCIATED PRESS

FAIRBANKS, Alaska - Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld yesterday praised the work of an Army brigade whose one-year tour in Iraq was extended just as they prepared to return home. He added that he saw no reason for the soldiers or their families to be angry at him.

"I don't put it in that context," he said. "These people are all volunteers. They all signed up. They all are there doing what they're doing because they want to do it. They're proud of what they do. They do it very, very well."

The Pentagon chief was meeting privately with 172nd Stryker Brigade families at Fort Wainwright, the unit's home base. Rumsfeld's aides said they expected as many as 600 people to attend and to have a chance to ask questions.

Reporters who traveled with Rumsfeld from Washington, D.C., were to be excluded from the session.

Asked why reporters would not be permitted to cover the event, Rumsfeld at first replied, "I don't have any idea. I haven't addressed the subject." Later he said he makes it a practice to make all family meetings private.

Rumsfeld said the 172nd Brigade was an effective force during its nearly one-year deployment to the Mosul area in northern Iraq. He said the soldiers performed well in the short time since they shifted to Baghdad as part of an effort by U.S. commanders to quell sectarian killings.

"They did a terrific job in Mosul, and they're already doing an excellent job in Baghdad," said Rumsfeld, indicating that commanders chose to extend the 172nd Brigade in part because of their extensive experience in Iraq.

The brigade's tour was extended by up to 120 days, bringing them close to a Christmas return date. Rumsfeld said he would make no promises that the full brigade would be back home by the holidays.

"I'd love to be Santa Claus. I'm not," he said in an interview with reporters during a flight to Fairbanks.

If it turned out that by December, U.S. commanders in Iraq felt they needed an unscheduled infusion of troops, "our first choice obviously would be to have them be someone other than the people we just extended," Rumsfeld said. "But I'm not going to get into the promises business. That isn't my style."

http://www.kentucky.com/mld/heraldleader/news/world/15372091.htm

Iraq bomb attacks, shootings kill 50

By ELENA BECATOROS, Associated Press Writer
46 minutes ago

Six U.S. soldiers were killed in Baghdad on Sunday, while an upsurge of violence across the country left 50 Iraqis dead, undercutting the prime minister's claim that government forces are prevailing over insurgents and sectarian extremists.

Four American soldiers died when their vehicle hit a roadside bomb in northern Baghdad, the U.S. military command said Monday. Another roadside bomb killed a U.S. soldier in western Baghdad, while gunfire in the eastern part of the capital killed another.

The military had earlier reported the death an American soldier Saturday in a roadside bomb southeast of Baghdad, making it one of the deadliest weekends for the U.S. military. More than 2,600 U.S. military personnel have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press Count.

link

Brought to you by, the Administration's Office of the Vice-President Neo-Conservative Scrotum Relief Initiative.

An interesting story from The Age on our permanent presence in Iraq.

Iraq strikes peace deal with militia as 155 killed
By :
Date : 30 August 2006 0140 hrs (SST)
URL : http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_world/view/227547/1/.html

DIWANIYAH, Iraq : Hard-pressed Iraqi government forces have been forced to strike a truce with Shiite militia fighters, as fierce fighting followed by a pipeline explosion left 155 people dead.

Officials said that 81 people died in Diwaniyah in Monday's clashes between security forces and militiamen and that on Tuesday, a few hours after a peace deal was reached, a fire at a fuel pipeline outside the town killed 74 more.

Hamid Jaathi, the head of Diwaniyah's health department, said that another 94 people were injured in the blast, which a defence official said was caused by looters sabotaging a disused fuel pipe to hunt for petrol on Tuesday.

Meanwhile - as Iraq reeled from a three-day bout of bloodshed - sectarian and rebel attacks left at least 14 people dead, including four members of one family who were killed when mortar bombs hit their house in south Baghdad's mainly Shiite neighbourhood of Al-Amel.

Since Saturday, when Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki hosted a peace conference for tribal leaders, Iraq has been battered by firefights, murders and bombings, in one of the most violent periods of recent months.

Scores of Iraqi troops and civilians have been killed along with 12 US soldiers, and government forces had to battle to retain control of the mainly Shiite city of Diwaniyah, 180 kilometres south of the capital.

"We reached a settlement with Mahdi Army forces to end the confrontation," town councillor Sheikh Ghanim Abid said, as shops in Diwaniyah reopened and water and electricity supplies were turned back on.

MORE

Iraqi Troops Battle Shiite Militiamen In Southern City
20 U.S.-Backed Soldiers Are Killed

By Sudarsan Raghavan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, August 29, 2006

BAGHDAD, Aug. 28 -- With American combat aircraft providing cover, U.S.-backed Iraqi troops battled radical Shiite militiamen Monday in the southern city of Diwaniyah in one of the first major clashes between the two forces. At least 20 Iraqi soldiers and eight civilians were killed, a U.S. military official said, citing initial reports. Seventy people were injured.

Also, a suicide bombing in Baghdad killed 15 and injured 35, capping one of the bloodiest 24 hours in Iraq in recent weeks.

The more-than-12-hour battle in Shiite Muslim-dominated Diwaniyah, about 100 miles south of Baghdad, illustrates the growing strength and confidence of the Mahdi Army militia of anti-U.S. cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who is increasingly challenging the authority of the Iraqi government and, by extension, the United States.

Some Iraqi soldiers were captured and beheaded, Iraqi army officials said. As of late Monday, it was unclear how many militiamen had died.

Nine U.S. soldiers also were killed over the weekend in and around Baghdad, the U.S. military said Monday, making it one of the most lethal weekends for American troops in recent months. Seven U.S. soldiers were killed by roadside bomb attacks and one by gunfire on Sunday, while another soldier was killed by a roadside bomb on Saturday.

On Sunday, gunmen and bombers killed at least 69 people, the deadliest of the attacks taking place outside Baghdad, in northern cities.

Meanwhile, new allegations of indiscriminate killings by U.S. troops surfaced Monday. Relatives and neighbors of seven civilians shot dead during a gun battle in a Baghdad neighborhood on Sunday said U.S. soldiers had stepped out of their vehicles and randomly fired at their car.

"The soldiers decided to kill everyone on the streets, and my mother was one of them," Mohammed Sabah al-Dulaimi, 19, an engineering student said in a telephone interview. "They were angry. There's no other reason for killing. They took revenge."

Dulaimi's mother, Suad Jodah Yaseen, was returning from work in a company car, which stopped some distance away from the scene where a roadside bomb had struck a U.S. military vehicle, according to her brother, Hadi Jodah Yaseen, 50.

"But random shooting by American soldiers hit her in the head and the chest, and one bullet pierced her chest and came out of the back," Yaseen said.

Lt. Col Barry Johnson, a U.S. military spokesman, confirmed that seven civilians were killed Sunday in Ghazaliyah, a volatile western Baghdad neighborhood where U.S. forces have bolstered their efforts to tame sectarian violence. But he said the civilians were caught in the crossfire of a gun battle between U.S. troops and insurgents.

Johnson said that insurgents opened fire on American troops with grenade launchers and guns after the roadside bomb detonated and that U.S. forces returned fire.

more at the Washington Post

-----

Juan Cole has commentary and stories regarding the recent violence in Iraq that are worth reading.

BAGHDAD: Hard-pressed Iraqi government forces were forced to strike a truce with Shia militia fighters yesterday, as fierce fighting followed by a pipeline explosion left 155 people dead.

Officials said that 81 people died in Diwaniya in Monday’s clashes between security forces and militiamen and that yesterday, a few hours after a peace deal was reached, a fire at a fuel pipeline outside the town killed 74 more.

Hamid Jaathi, the head of Diwaniya’s health department, said that another 94 people were injured in the blast, which a defence official said was caused by looters sabotaging a disused fuel pipe to hunt for petrol.

Meanwhile – as Iraq reeled from a three-day bout of bloodshed – sectarian and rebel attacks left at least 14 people dead, including four members of one family who were killed when mortar bombs hit their house in south Baghdad’s mainly Shia neighbourhood of Al Amel.

Since Saturday, when Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki hosted a peace conference for tribal leaders, Iraq has been battered by firefights, murders and bombings, in one of the most violent periods of recent months.

Scores of Iraqi troops and civilians have been killed along with 12 US soldiers, and government forces had to battle to retain control of the mainly Shia city of Diwaniya, 180km south of the capital.

"We reached a settlement with Mahdi Army forces to end the confrontation," town councillor Sheikh Ghanim Abid said, as shops in Diwaniya reopened and water and electricity supplies were turned back on.

"We killed 50 gunmen in the clashes and this incident resulted in the deaths of 23 of our soldiers and injuries to 30 of them," Maliki said.

Jaathi said eight civilians were also killed in Monday’s 12-hour gun battle, and that 61 wounded bystanders had been treated.

The army has agreed not to enter residential areas for three days, while the Mahdi Army will withdraw its fighters and a militia commander who was arrested at the weekend will be brought to court within 24 hours, Abid said.

"We are now watching the militia withdrawing. They started pulling out early this morning and they’re still going," an Iraqi army captain said.

The Mahdi Army is nominally loyal to radical Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, whose party has ministers in the government and a large parliamentary bloc, but aides said the battle had been triggered by rogue elements.

Saheb al-Ameri, the head of Sadr’s office in Najaf, said Diwaniya’s governor met the firebrand cleric on Monday to negotiate an end to the battle, which he blamed on the "personal behaviour" of some Mahdi Army members.

During Monday’s fighting, an American F-16 jet dropped a 220-kilo satellite-guided bomb on an ‘enemy position’ while flying in support of Iraqi and coalition troops, the US air force said. – AFP

Published: Wednesday, 30 August, 2006, 10:11 AM Doha Time
http://www.gulf-times.com/site/topics/article.aspx?cu_no=2&item_no=105222

David Bier
CADRE Intel Mgr
http://groups.google.com/group/publicintel