BAGHDAD, 27 March 2005 — Iraqi forces have detained scores of foreigners, including Arabs, Pakistanis and Afghans, on suspicion of planning attacks on the country’s Shiites.
A Defense Ministry source yesterday said some 130 suspects were arrested during a raid in Jurf Al-Sakhr, about 60 km south of Baghdad. “We found explosive devices and materials, booby-trapped cars and compact discs showing beheadings,” said the source.
He said preliminary interrogation of the suspects had revealed that they had a list of clerics targeted for assassination in the mid-Euphrates region, which includes Karbala and Najaf. “Some of them were tasked with attacking visitors to Karbala and Najaf with small-arms fire and roadside bombs and even poisoning their food,” the source said.
Insurgents seeking to thwart any new government and drive US troops from Iraq continued their attacks. A car bomb struck a US military patrol in the Iraqi capital, killing two US soldiers and injuring two others. Earlier, the US military announced a Marine died in action in a restive central province.
The morning bomb attack against a Task Force Baghdad patrol that killed the two Americans and wounded two others is under investigation, the military said in a statement.
The Marine was killed a day earlier during a “security and stability” operation in strife-torn Anbar province, a heavily Sunni Arab region west of Baghdad that contains the flashpoint cities of Fallujah and Ramadi.
As efforts to form a new Iraqi government continued, interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said Shiite religious leaders should stay out of politics, an unprecedented public criticism of the powerful clergy.
“Thrusting the religious establishment into daily political affairs could distance it from its guiding role and disrupt relations between the political forces, which could create an imbalance,” his National Accord Party said in a letter sent to Shiite and Kurdish politicians. “Everyone must agree on the role of the religious leadership in the interim period,” it said. State-owned Al-Sabah newspaper published the letter.
Public criticism of Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani, Iraq’s most influential Shiite cleric, is almost unheard of in the country.
It could deepen a political crisis sparked by the failure so far to form a government after the Jan. 30 elections.
Sistani, who lives in Najaf, has never met Allawi. The Iranian-born cleric backed a Shiite list that won a majority in Parliament.
Sistani approved of Allawi when he became interim prime minister in June, Shiite politicians say, but now endorses Ibrahim Jaafari as the bloc’s candidate for prime minister.
Jaafari yesterday said the country’s new coalition government could be launched within days. “God willing, the government could witness its birth in the coming few days,” said Jaafari.
— Additional input from agencies
