Word: basra
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...Maliki's office confirmed that the Iraqi government has given residents of Basra until April 8 to turn over "heavy and medium-size weapons" in return for a reward. Government adviser Sadiq al-Rikabi said the deadline is separate from a three-day ultimatum for gunmen in the southern town to surrender their arms and renounce violence or face harsher measures. That expires later Friday...
News from the south of Iraq was no less grim. In Basra, Iraqi forces pressed their three-day offensive against what both Iraqi and Coalition forces continue to call "criminal elements." Spokesmen for Moqtada al-Sadr have openly denounced the military campaign and called for the immediate withdrawal of Iraqi forces. In what is widely regarded as an effort to maintain the precarious ceasefire renewed by Sadr in February, both coalition forces and the Iraqi military have carefully avoided referring to the armed fighters as Sadr's supporters, but rather as unaffiliated criminals and thugs. "The operation in Basra...
Meanwhile, Maliki traveled to Basra on Monday in a show of force against the "criminals." He has given the armed fighters 72 hours to surrender their weapons, a deadline that runs out this weekend. In the Green Zone in Baghdad, Senior British Military Representative Lieutenant Colonel Michael Shearer told TIME that the Iraqi operation is aimed at quelling criminal activity, and that the city has never been under the "control" of militant groups...
...wire reports and eyewitnesses have reflected a far more ferocious battle. Reports indicate that more than 100 people have been killed, and hundreds more wounded since the start of the attack on Tuesday. And independent Iraqi news network al-Sharqia aired footage from Basra of masked, armed men standing atop what it said was the burned carcasses of Iraqi military humvees, with "Jaish al-imam"--Army of the Imam--graffitied on the sides...
Wire sources also reported that a suicide bomber attacked the convoy of Basra police commander Abdul Jalil Khalaf. Khalaf was unharmed but three other police were killed. Sadr supporters also clashed with Iraqi police in the southern towns of Hilla and Kut. With a curfew now in place across southern Iraq and in Baghdad, few in the Iraqi capital see a drop in the renewed violence coming anytime soon...