BAGHDAD, 27 March 2006 — US troops mounted two raids against Shiite forces in Baghdad yesterday, killing up to 22 gunmen in a raid on a mosque, and arresting more than 40 Interior Ministry personnel guarding a secret prison.
Details were sketchy but the two operations looked like US strikes against sectarian Shiite militias of the kind the US ambassador said Saturday must be eliminated if Iraq is to form a unity government and halt a slide toward civil war.
A senior Interior Ministry official denied the arrests of its personnel at a facility in central Baghdad where government and political sources said US troops freed 17 foreign prisoners.
A US source confirmed that American and Iraqi forces had detained 41 Interior Ministry personnel guarding a secret bunker complex.
Most foreigners in detention are accused of being Sunni Al-Qaeda fighters who come to Iraq to fight Americans and Shiites.
In November, US troops freed 173 mostly Sunni prisoners, some of whom had been tortured, from a secret Interior Ministry facility in Baghdad.
Earlier, in an unusual admission, Interior Ministry officials said a police major accused of taking part in death squad killings had been arrested in Baquba, northeast of Baghdad.
Iraqi police and residents said a US raid on a Shiite mosque in the Shaab district of east Baghdad sparked fierce clashes with militiamen of the Mehdi Army loyal to cleric Moqtada Sadr. A medical source at Yarmouk Hospital said he saw 18 bodies of Iraqis killed in the operation.
Police sources said 22 Mehdi Army fighters were killed in the fighting, close to Sadr’s stronghold in the Sadr City slum, and five vehicles belonging to the militia were burned.
Associated Press videotape from the scene showed a tangle of dead male bodies with gunshot wounds on the floor of what was said to be the mosque imam’s living quarters, attached to the place of worship.
The tape showed 5.56mm shell casings scattered about the floor. US forces use that size ammunition. Grieving men stepped among the bodies strewn across a bloody floor, searching for their relatives.
An American military spokesman said there would be no comment until an “operational report” was filed by soldiers in the field. “We understand there are reports out there with some inaccuracies. We’re trying to ensure we’ve got it right,” said Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, spokesman for the Baghdad command. The command will not make a statement “until we get an operational report and have it confirmed,” he said.
A senior aide to Sadr, in comments capable of inflaming passions among the cleric’s supporters, accused US troops of shooting dead more than 20 unarmed worshippers at the Mustafa Mosque after tying them up. The aide denied they were Mehdi Army gunmen.
The new violence was reported hours after Sadr personally was the apparent target of a mortar attack at his home in Najaf, 150 km south of Baghdad.
At least one mortar round slammed to earth within 50 meters of Sadr’s home, wounding one guard and a passing child, said Sadr aide Sheikh Sahib Al-Amiri.
Shortly after the attack, Sadr issued a statement calling for calm. “I call upon all brothers to stay calm and I call upon the Iraqi Army to protect the pilgrims as the militants are aiming to attack Shiites every day,” he said.
