NAJAF, Iraq, 17 May 2005 — Iraq’s firebrand Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr made a rare public appearance in Najaf yesterday to call for restraint amid sectarian tension between Shiite and Sunni Muslims.
“Any action targeting unarmed civilians is forbidden under any circumstances,” Sadr said during a news conference, the first held by the young cleric since the fierce fighting that pitted his militia against US troops last year in Najaf.
“We reject these terror operations, whether they are carried out by the occupiers or others,” he added.
“The occupiers are trying to sow division among the Iraqi people, but there are no Sunnis and Shiites. Iraqis are one.”
The comments he made from his house in the Hannana neighborhood came against a backdrop of sectarian violence and a day after at least 46 bodies killed execution-style were found in Baghdad and elsewhere in Iraq.
Several of the victims were Sunnis and the repetition of such incidents has fueled fears that Shiite militias would no longer heed calls from their clerics to show restraint in the face of attacks by extremist groups.
The young cleric led one of the most serious challenges to the authority of the now-defunct US administration by igniting an uprising in southern and central Iraq against occupation troops.
The fighting culminated in a bloody standoff in Najaf last August, before Ayatollah Ali Sistani brokered a solution. Sadr has since shown interest in joining the political arena and officially agreed to disband his Mehdi Army.
“If occupation forces leave Iraq, there will be no ethnic conflict here, and I’m ready to fight terrorists wherever they are if the occupiers leave,” he told reporters.
Meanwhile, a suicide car bomber killed at least five people and wounded 30 at a customs checkpoint near Iraq’s border with Syria yesterday, an Iraqi official said. The victims at the town of Rabia were mostly civilians.
