No let-up in Shiite uprising

2004-05-16 15:40

Baghdad - Shiite militiamen clashed with coalition troops in both central and southern Iraq on Sunday as the month-old uprising led by radical cleric Moqtada Sadr showed no sign of abating while the US military came under new fire over the abuse of prisoners.

Three Iraqis were killed in an early morning rocket attack that targeted a British camp near Basra, while two Iraqis were killed and 15 wounded in clashes in the central holy cities of Karbala and Najaf.

Twenty people were also wounded when a shell exploded in a market in the southern city of Nasiriyah.

Dozens of people have been killed in clashes between Sadr's Mehdi Army militia and the US-led coalition since Friday.

Ground forces commander Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez on Saturday demanded a swift end to the Sadr insurgency, with fewer than 50 days to go to the coalition's June 30 deadline for the handover of power.

Interim foreign minister Hoshyar Zebari said in comments published Sunday that the uprising was causing great "harm to the aims and aspiration of the Iraqi people" and said Sadr should concentrate on fighting January elections.

US troops will stay

Despite the persistent violence, President George W Bush vowed that US troops would stay on in Iraq after the end of the occupation.

"The vital mission of our military in helping to provide security will continue on July 1 and beyond," he told Americans in his weekly radio address.

The president's comments came after Secretary of State Colin Powell pledged that Washington would respect the sovereignty of the post-June 30 administration and lead key allies Britain, Italy and Japan in pulling out its troops if asked.

Abuse 'encouraged'

The US military meanwhile faced fresh allegations from the US media that the abuse of detainees in Iraq was not an aberration, but a practice encouraged by the high command.

US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld approved a secret programme that encouraged the sort of interrogation methods used at Abu Ghraib, the US-run prison at the central of the abuse scandal, to get information about the growing insurgency, the New Yorker magazine reports in this week's edition.

The Pentagon put out a strong denial, saying the report was "outlandish, conspiratorial, and filled with error and anonymous conjecture."

But the Washington Post published similar accusations, saying a US military intelligence officer working at Abu Ghraib had designed a plan last November that would subject a Syrian national held there to strip searches and sleep depravation in order to break him.

Allegations against the British military also refused to go away Sunday, despite the admission by the Daily Mirror last week that its photographs of alleged abuse were fake.

Six British soldiers face charges within days over abuse of detainees in southern Iraq, the Independent on Sunday reported. - Sapa-AFP

- SAPA