By KUNA
Baghdad : Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki, spearheading a major military operation aimed at uprooting militia presence in the southern city of Basra, declared on Wednesday a 72-hour ultimatum to the gunmen to drop their arms.
Militants in the city must hand over their weapons to the nearest security station and vow to refrain from involvement in illegal action, otherwise they will face “the toughest penalties,” warned Al-Maliki in remarks broadcast by the state-run television.
Al-Maliki, personally overseeing the mop-up operation in Basra, had arrived in the city hours before launch of the operation early on Tuesday.
A security source told Kuwait News Agency (KUNA) that armed clashes broke out between the government forces and rag-tag militiamen of the radical cleric Muqtada Al-Sadr at various locations in the city. The fighting was most intense in the district of Al-Qubla and on Baghdad Street, he added.
The regulars are sealing off the district of Al-Habbaniah trying in vain to burst into it, he said, alluding to the major hotbed of the Sadrists, while mortar shells are falling onto various parts of the city.
In a revised casualty toll, medical sources said the fighting has killed 40 people and wounded 200 other people since the clashes erupted.