World Apr. 24, 2008 - 05:13AM JST ( 25 )

BAGHDAD —

A U.S. general urged Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr on Wednesday to do more to halt attacks by his loyalists on the security forces, as Baghdad was rocked by fresh fighting that killed 21 people.

“We hope that Moqtada al-Sadr will influence his elements to stop violence and that he will work in favor of peace,” Lieutenant General Lloyd Austin, the number two commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, told a news conference in Baghdad.

His comments came as the U.S. military said it had killed 21 people in clashes overnight in Shiite areas of east Baghdad, pushing the death toll in fighting there between militiamen and U.S. and Iraqi forces since late March to at least 366.

Sadr has warned of “open war” if assaults against his Mahdi Army militia, who were ordered by the cleric last August to observe a ceasefire, are not halted.

Austin blamed much of the violence on “Special Groups”—fighters the U.S. military says are renegade Mahdi Army elements trained by Iranians in the use of sophisticated weaponry.

“Special Groups criminals are continuing to hurt people with violent actions. They must be brought to justice. The people of Sadr City are tired of them,” he said.

U.S. Col Allen Batschelet told a separate media briefing that Special Groups members were blending in with mainstream Mahdi Army members.

“These two groups are so amorphous. They cross back and forth between one and another. It is difficult to say who is who,” he said.

“We see evidence of a guy who might be working very hard inside JAM (Jaish al-Mahdi—the Mahdi Army) to present himself as mainstream kind of a compliant person, yet we have other indicators that show him… kind of working you know… got a night job to do a Special Group criminal kind of stuff.”

Batschelet said militiamen had fired almost 700 rockets and mortar rounds from various locations in Baghdad in the past month. Of these, 114 hit the highly fortified Green Zone where the Iraqi government and U.S. embassy are based.

The latest fighting began when Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki ordered a crackdown on Shiite militiamen in the southern city of Basra on March 25.

Clashes quickly spread to other Shiite areas of Iraq, and the fighting since April 6 has focused mainly in Sadr City, a Mahdi Army bastion.

Fighting, meanwhile, erupted in Husseiniyah, on the northeastern outskirts of the capital, where six militiamen were killed late on Tuesday, Lt-Col Steven Stover said.

They were killed when U.S. troops returned fire after coming under attack with rocket-propelled grenades and small arms fire when their Bradley tank became stuck in the mud, he said.

An Iraqi security official said seven people were killed in Husseiniyah, among them two women.

The U.S. military said 15 other people were killed in battles in eastern Baghdad, which is dominated by Sadr City.

American forces used ground troops and air strikes during the clashes which began late afternoon Tuesday, the military said.

A U.S. soldier also died of wounds sustained in a firefight on Wednesday in east Baghdad, the military added.

Meanwhile, a 10-strong parliamentary delegation comprising Sunni and Shiite lawmakers toured Sadr City on Wednesday and demanded that Iraqi forces ease their “siege” of the district.

“We demand that the siege of Sadr City be lifted,” said Harith al-Obeidi, an MP of the National Concord Front Sunni bloc. “The people of this poverty stricken district have already suffered enough. We don’t want them to be besieged by Iraqi soldiers.”

The delegation visited wounded people in the hospitals and houses damaged and destroyed in the fighting.

AFP