Iraqi Shias Protest Relocation Plans/ 8 Die in Sadr City Attack

An Iraqi man shouts leading mourners carrying the coffin of a man killed in Baghdad's Sadr City, a Shiite slum in the eastern part of the capital, during overnight fighting Sunday Sept. 25, 2005. In the early hours Sunday, U.S. and Iraqi forces clashed with gunmen loyal to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, killing at least eight Iraqis in an east Baghdad slum. (AP Photo/Karim Kadim)

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September 25, 2005
U.S. Forces Kill 10 of Rebel Cleric's Men in Sadr City
By ROBERT F. WORTH
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Sunday, Sept. 25 - American forces killed 10 Shiite militia members early Sunday during heavy fighting in the Sadr City district of Baghdad, Interior Ministry officials said.

The fighting broke out about 2 a.m. after American forces arrested several members of the Mahdi Army, a militia loyal to the renegade cleric Moktada al Sadr, the officials said.

The clashes were the first between American forces and Mr. Sadr's militia since August 2004, when the Mahdi Army fought a lengthy battle in the southern city of Najaf.

It was not clear how many Mahdi Army members had been arrested or why. The United States military could not be immediately reached for comment.

The clashes came less than a week after British forces in Basra arrested two high-ranking Mahdi Army members. Those arrests too led to violence, with militia members attacking British soldiers when they raided a police station where two British officers were being held.

On Saturday, Basra city officials announced that a judge had issued an arrest warrant for the two British officers.

In warrants issued Thursday, Judge Raghib Hassan al-Radhi accused the men of killing an Iraqi police officer and wounding another, and other crimes.

The officers were freed Monday after British tanks crashed through the walls of the police station, in an incident that became a diplomatic embarrassment for Britain.

British military officials said they acted because the men had been handed over to a Shiite militia, but Iraqi officials have angrily criticized the raid, and some have said they would refuse to cooperate with British forces.

Also in Basra on Saturday, thousands of people rallied in support of Iraq's new constitution, which goes before Iraqi voters in a nationwide referendum in three weeks. Iraq's most senior Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, indicated Thursday he would issue a holy edict urging Iraqis to vote in favor of the document.

In Baghdad on Saturday, a suicide car bomber steered an explosive-laden Opel sedan into an Iraqi Army checkpoint in the Wahda neighborhood and blew himself up. The fiery explosion killed two soldiers and wounded two soldiers and three civilians, and it left the smoldering carcass of the Opel and other debris in the street.