By AFP,
Baghdad : Militiamen bombarded the heavily fortified Baghdad Green Zone under cover of a heavy sandstorm on Sunday as a hardline Iraqi Shiite group rejected government conditions to end the fighting.
An interior ministry official said the Green Zone, where the Iraqi government and US embassy is based, was hit by at least 10 rockets or mortar rounds, while embassy staffers put the number at closer to 15. It was immediately not clear if any of the blasts caused casualties or major damage.
Each wave of projectiles triggered alarms and sent American embassy staff scurrying for cover, an embassy official said, adding that staffers were sheltering inside the building, formerly a palace of executed dictator Saddam Hussein.
US and Iraqi military commanders say around 700 rockets or mortar bombs have been fired from various locations in Baghdad in the past month, mainly from Sadr City, the east Baghdad bastion of the Mahdi Army militia of radical anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. Of these, 114 projectiles have hit the Green Zone, killing two US soldiers, two US embassy personnel and two Iraqi guards.
Those firing the rockets are often identified by US surveillance aircraft that alert helicopters which deploy Hellfire missiles against the attackers. However with Sunday’s sandstorm reducing visibility helicopters were unable to take off, allowing the militiamen to escape after firing the missiles.
General Abud Qanbar Hashim, Iraqi commander of Baghdad Operations Command, said last week that 82 people had been killed and 476 wounded in rocket and mortar fire in Baghdad since March 25, much of it coming from Sadr City. Iraqi army spokesman Major General Qasim Atta told a news conference in Baghdad on Sunday that most of the rockets fired were Iranian-made.
“We have found many Iranian-made weapons — Katyusha and Grad rockets, and smart roadside bombs and smart bombs. We have also seized some documents and identified some people,” he said, without elaborating.
Clashes between militiamen and US-Iraqi forces in Sadr City have killed more than 400 people in the past month, according to an AFP tally based on reports by Iraqi and US officials. Meanwhile Sadr’s group rejected Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s conditions for an end to the fighting between militiamen and security forces.
“We object to the conditions that Maliki has put forward,” said Sheikh Salah al-Obeidi, spokesman for the Sadr movement in the central holy city of Najaf. “He (Maliki) is saying that the government has the right to do whatever it wants. We say the crisis can be resolved by objective dialogue.”
On Saturday, in an interview with Al-Arabiya television, Maliki laid down four conditions for an end to the onslaught against Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia by his forces.
“We have four demands, not more, that all those carrying arms — not just the Mahdi Army — should adhere to,” Maliki told the Dubai-based news channel. “Handing in all heavy and medium weapons, and not interfering in the work of governmental departments,” Maliki said, spelling out his first two conditions. “Never interfere in the tasks of the police and army, so that police and army would operate everywhere — in Sadr City, Basra and Mosul — without any objections,” he added. Maliki also demanded the “handing in of the wanted.”
On March 25 Iraqi forces launched an assault in the southern city of Basra which initially faced fierce resistance from Shiite militiamen, mostly from the Mahdi Army.
In the first few days of the operation at least 700 people were killed in the port city, according to the United Nations. The firefights in Basra triggered clashes in other Shiite regions of Iraq, particularly in Baghdad’s Sadr City, the cleric’s base in the capital.
A 20-strong parliamentary delegation meanwhile toured Sadr City on Sunday and demanded an end to the “siege” of the sprawling area, an AFP correspondent said. The delegation, comprising Sunnis, Kurds and Sadrists, held talks with local representatives of Sadr’s movement.
In a statement the MPs appealed to the government to “end military operations, raids and house-to-house searches.” “They also appealed for a lifting of the “siege” and demanded an inquiry into “human rights violations” in Sadr City. Atta denied the sprawling district was under siege by the military.