BAGHDAD, 12 October 2004 — Followers of Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr began surrendering arms in the Iraqi capital yesterday, but fighting flared elsewhere in the country.
“I’ve given up my weapons, I’m with the interim government now,” said Ahmed Hashem after handing over 22 rocket-propelled grenades. “We want peace and I won’t fight the Americans.”
Hashem got $1,100 for his arsenal under a plan that pays $50 for any AK-47, rocket-propelled grenade or mortar round.
The US-backed government aims to retake control of rebel-held areas throughout Iraq by political or military means ahead of national assembly elections due in January.
Mehdi Army fighters began handing in weapons at the start of a five-day period in which they have agreed to disarm in the flashpoint Sadr City district.
At Habibiya police station, the biggest of three designated collection points in Sadr City, cameramen were allowed to film only one batch of arms police said had been delivered earlier in a civilian vehicle. The weaponry included RPGs, rusty mortars and artillery shells, anti-tank land mines and assault rifles.
One Mehdi Army fighter, Kamel Hussein, walked off later with $14,500 for delivering a big stash of RPGs and mortars. Another man brought in a Sam-7 anti-aircraft missile. But there were only three handovers at Habibiya in three hours.
Karim Bakhati, a tribal leader who helped negotiate the weapons exchange, said he hoped it would bring peace to the slum district of some two million people, and condemned any fighters who failed to participate.
After the five days allowed for disarmament, police and National Guards are due to take control of Sadr City, where the government has pledged to spend over $500 million on rebuilding. “If necessary we will extend the five-day period,” senior security officer Abdul-Karim Al-Saffar said.
He estimated that fighters would receive up to half a million dollars on Monday under the money-for-guns arrangement, although a Sadr spokesman said true militiamen were handing over their weapons for free.
Insecurity is rife even in Iraqi cities nominally under control of the security forces. A suicide car bomber attacked a US convoy in the northern city of Mosul, killing two civilians and a US solider, and wounding 17, the US military said. In a statement, the military said nine of those wounded were soldiers but six had already been returned to duty.
Mosul police said the bomb had been placed in the back of a flat-bed truck and hidden under crates of fruit and vegetables. One of those killed was a street cleaner.
The beheaded bodies of two Iraqis were also found in the city. There was no word on the motive for their killings.
Separately, a militant group said it beheaded a Turkish contractor and his Iraqi translator for working with US forces, Al-Jazeera television said, citing a website.
In western Iraq, US Marines clashed with scores of fighters near the town of Hit, 170 km west of Baghdad. Some insurgents took up positions inside a mosque, the US military said, prompting troops to call in air support. Subsequent airstrikes damaged the mosque and left it ablaze, the military said.
In another development, the US military yesterday released at least 154 detainees from the notorious Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad and Camp Bucca in southern Iraq.
Military spokesman Lt. Col. Barry Johnson said the releases were not linked to the Sadr City peace initiative.
— Additional input from agencies
