Word: iraqi
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...larger question, though, is how many "criminal elements" can ignore the cease-fire before the cease-fire becomes meaningless as a practical matter. Even as Bergner characterized the fight as a battle between the Iraqi government and "criminals," rockets launched from the militia's Sadr City stronghold poured into the Green Zone for the fourth straight...
...mostly stayed out of the fighting, preferring to let the Iraqi government and Iraqi troops take the lead. Bergner would not comment on whether the Americans would become involved more directly if the Iraqi government could not complete its Basra operation. "I would say," he said, "that's a very hypothetical question at this time...
...also the question of the hour. If the violence continues to intensify and the Iraqi government cannot finish what it started then the U.S. must choose whether to throw its troops into the fight. If that happens then the seven-month cease-fire, which was vital to the dramatic drop in violence late last year, will truly be over and a new round of bloodletting may be about to begin...
Thursday also marked the third day of escalated fighting in other sections of the city, spurred by the launch of an Iraqi military operation against armed militants - many of them supporters of powerful Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr - in the southern Iraqi city of Basra. Thousands of Iraqi Shi'ites massed in three districts of Baghdad, including Sadr City - the notoriously dangerous slum and stronghold of Sadr's militia, the Mahdi Army - to protest the offensive in Basra. One group of demonstrators in Khadamiya district carried a coffin with a photo of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's face...
...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...