BAGHDAD, 9 August 2004 — Iraq’s interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi yesterday ordered cleric Moqtada Sadr’s militiamen still holed up in Najaf to leave the city as his government reinstated the death penalty and an Iranian diplomat was kidnapped.
Clashes broke out for a fourth consecutive night between Iraqi police and Sadr’s Mehdi Army in Najaf and further south near Amara, where one Iraqi was killed in a skirmish with British troops.
Two US helicopters fired on Najaf’s vast cemetery, where many fighters have hunkered down in the pilgrimage city.
On a surprise visit to Najaf, a day after extending an olive branch to militia leader Sadr by inviting him to run in upcoming elections, Allawi made a fresh call for fighters to leave the city.
“The outlaws have to lay down their weapons and leave the city’s holy sites including the Imam Ali Mosque.”.
The US military estimates that 500 militiamen are pitted against more than 5,000 US troops, Iraqi police and Iraqi National Guard, who have pounded Mehdi positions since the militia twice attacked a police station on Thursday.
More than 50 people have been killed and 300 wounded in bloodshed throughout Iraq over the past 24 hours, based on Health Ministry figures.
Also, arrest warrants have been issued for Ahmad Chalabi, a former Governing Council member, on counterfeiting charges and for Salem Chalabi, the head of Iraq’s special tribunal which is trying Saddam Hussein, on murder charges, Iraq’s chief investigating judge said yesterday.
“They should be arrested and then questioned and then we will evaluate the evidence, and then if there is enough evidence, they will be sent to trial,” said Judge Zuhair al-Maliky. The warrants, issued Saturday, accused Ahmad Chalabi of counterfeiting old Iraqi dinars — which had been removed from circulation following the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime last year, he said.
Sadr spokesman Sheikh Ahmed Shaibani said that 15 militiamen had been killed, dismissing US estimates that 300 fighters have been mowed down in the four nights of fighting. One Iraqi was killed and two wounded when the Mehdi Army attacked a British military patrol north of Amara yesterday evening, said police.
Meanwhile, relations between Baghdad and Tehran deteriorated as a group kidnapped Iran’s consul in Karbala, while Iran said it was not prepared to hold serious talks with the US-backed interim government.
Iran’s mission in Baghdad said Fereydun Jahani disappeared Wednesday, after a group called the Islamic Army in Iraq announced it had “detained” him for “stirring sectarian strife” and “activities outside his diplomatic duties”.
Pictures were shown of the diplomat’s passport, identity and business cards along with what appeared to be footage of him speaking, without sound.
In Sadr’s Baghdad stronghold of Sadr City, the US military said there had been Iraqi casualties when a district office was attacked by the Mehdi Army. Sporadic attacks on patrols continued throughout the day.
A US helicopter, forced to make an emergency landing northwest of Sadr City, had not been attacked but suffered maintenance problems, according to the military.
In Baghdad, a 10-year-old boy died when a mortar slammed into a small truck and a seven-year-old child died in Kirkuk, northern Iraq, when a roadside bomb exploded.
West of Kirkuk, a Kurdish businessman was found stabbed to death in the predominantly Arab town of Al-Riad, police added.
In the Italian-patrolled southern city of Nassiriyah, arsonists torched the offices of Allawi’s political party.
Faced with a persistent 16-month insurgency, a legacy of the 2003 US-led invasion, the caretaker government yesterday reinstated the death penalty for murderers, drug traffickers and those endangering national security. Mass killings, strikes against vital infrastructure and biological weapons attacks would also be punishable by death, Deputy Justice Minister Busho Ibrahim said.
Capital punishment was legal under the former regime, and many Iraqis have demanded that Saddam Hussein, charged with committing crimes against humanity and war crimes, be executed.
Meanwhile, the Kuwaiti firm which has seven truckers kidnapped in Iraq said yesterday that mediation efforts to release them had failed and called instead for direct negotiations.
“The Kuwait Gulf and Link (KGL) transport company regrets that negotiations over the last two days in Baghdad with Mr. Hisham Al-Dulaymi ... did not achieve positive results,” KGL spokeswoman Rana Abu-Zaineh said in a statement.
— Additional input from agencies
