Word: basra
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...cleric Moqtada al-Sadr today called for an end to the fighting between his followers and Iraqi forces in the escalating conflict that has engulfed the southern city of Basra. In a statement issued from his headquarters in Najaf, al-Sadr demanded, in return, that the government give his supporters amnesty and release any followers that are being held...
...statement was the first hopeful sign of a possible end to the conflict that the Iraqi and American governments originally billed as a battle against criminal gangs in Basra, but that escalated into a full-fledged fight with the Mahdi Army, Iraq's largest militia. On Saturday the Iraqi government, the Mahdi Army and U.S. forces all escalated the fight, and the militia's seven-month-old cease-fire seemed on the brink of total collapse...
...ability to crack down on militants in Iraq's second-largest city. He and top security ministers traveled south as the operation got underway to supervise it in person. But the pretense that the operation was simply a crackdown on ragtag criminal elements fell by wayside as militias in Basra offered stiff resistance...
...Holloway also sought to clarify earlier remarks that had been interpreted in Western media reports to mean that the U.S. planes had dropped bombs in Basra. He told TIME Friday night that American planes used heavy machine guns - not explosives - to attack two militia positions. He said the first had been a mortar team that had been firing on Iraqi soldiers, while the second was a fortified position that Holloway said had been "teeming with enemy...
...Whatever the specific weapons used in the U.S. close air support operations in Basra, their significance is clear. Taken together with Friday's announcement by Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki that the three-day deadline he had originally given militia fighters to surrender their weapons had now been extended to 10 days (and that those who complied would be financially rewarded), the U.S. air strikes appear to indicate that the fighting has been tougher than Iraqi government officials had anticipated. And while they insist that the offensive is aimed only at "rogue elements" of the Madhi Army and other militias...