Iraqi regime launches assault on Basra
One Mahdi Army militiaman, reached by telephone in Baghdad’s Sadr City, told the Christian Science Monitor, “The cease-fire is over; we have been told to fight the Americans.” One official in Sadr’s Basra office, speaking on condition of anonymity, informed a Los Angeles Times reporter, “The Sadr current is threatening to set fire to the oil wells in Basra if the Iraqi military continues its security plan.”
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s government initiated the latest violence by launching a major military campaign early Tuesday morning against Sadr’s forces in Basra, the center of Iraq’s oil industry. While the US media passes along the claim that the assault came in response to clashes in recent days between Iraqi police and army forces and elements of Sadr’s Mahdi Army, the operation, codenamed Saulat al-Fursan (Charge of the Knights), was obviously planned well in advance, with the support or insistence of the American and British military. The New York Times noted in passing that “senior Iraqi officials had been signaling [the operation] for weeks.” As many as 15,000 Iraqi troops are involved.
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