Word: moqtada
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...against mounting chaos in the capital and in the south of the country. The Iraqi government has placed the city under a curfew, banning all civilian vehicle use, until Sunday morning. The south of Iraq, where heavy fighting between Iraqi forces and militias loyal to powerful Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr has raged since Tuesday, is also under curfew. Over one hundred people are reported to have been killed, and hundreds more injured, as Iraqi forces led by Shi'ite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki struggle to take control of the city...
...government, the offensive by Iraqi security forces against militiamen in Basra is increasingly drawing in the United States, both militarily and politically. U.S. air power was used in the key port city for the first time on Thursday night in support of Iraqi forces trying to dislodge fighters of Moqtada Sadr's Mahdi Army, and U.S. troops clashed with Mahdi Army militants in the Baghdad neighborhood of Sadr City on Friday. President Bush, speaking in Washington, called the fight a "defining moment" for Iraq, but the clashes could have important implications for the U.S. mission there...
...badly. The U.S. military has been very careful to say that the current offensive by the Iraqi government in southern Iraq was simply "enforcement of the law in Basra." It was not directed against the Mahdi Army, the militia run by radical Shi'ite cleric (and political powerhouse) Moqtada al-Sadr, whose seven-month-old cease-fire has been key to the success of the American surge. The U.S. maintained that line today even though it was clear that the "criminal gangs" battling government forces in Basra were identifiable as elements of the Mahdi Army. In a military briefing...
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...
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...