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Anti-US backlash gains clout
11/10/2003 15:55 - (SA)
Baghdad - Hundreds marched on Saturday to back a shadow cabinet formed by anti-US firebrand Moqtada Sadr after three Iraqis were killed in attacks and the US army launched sweeps in Saddam Hussein's stronghold.
An Iraqi officer was killed and six policemen were wounded on Saturday in a hand grenade attack near the town of Karbala south of Baghdad, police spokesperson Rahman Mashawi Zhiab said, adding that three men were later detained in the area.
The attack came after the killing on Friday of two employees of an Iraqi state-owned oil company and a sabotage explosion that started a large fire on an oil pipeline in the north.
The two Northern Oil Company workers were killed in a roadside bombing that wounded four others, according to the company's director general, Adel Ghazzaz.
The explosion ripped through a company bus on the road between Baiji and the town of Riyadh, 40km west of Kirkuk.
In the Shiite Muslim holy city of Najaf, 180km south of Baghdad, hundreds of people took to the streets on Saturday to express support for the shadow cabinet announced by Sadr.
The crowd gathered in front of his office next to the Imam Ali shrine in central Najaf, a correspondent said.
Sacrifice our souls
"We are ready to sacrifice our souls for you, Sadr," chanted the demonstrators as they roamed the streets of the city.
"We are against the American occupation forces and we back everything that Moqtada Sadr says," Mohammad Hassan al-Rumaissi, one of the demonstrators, told reporters.
The demonstrators were responding to a call by Sadr during his weekly sermon in the nearby town of Kufa, in which he announced the formation of a shadow cabinet.
"I have decided and I have formed a government made up of several ministries, including ministries of justice, finance, information, interior, foreign affairs, (religious) endowments and the promotion of virtue and prevention of vice," the young cleric said.
"If you agree, I ask you to demonstrate peacefully in order to express your support."
Sadr, a radical who heads the thousands-strong Mehdi Army militia, was ignored by the US-led coalition in the formation of Iraq's interim Governing Council.
On the ground, US soldiers detained four people near Saddam's hometown of Tikrit, 175km north of Baghdad, on suspicion of financing activities linked to anti-coalition attacks.
"Four people were detained last night (Friday) in Qadisiya suburb of Tikrit and are being questioned," said Lieutenant Colonel Bill MacDonald, speaking for the 4th Infantry Division based in the Tikrit area.
"I cannot get specific because they are still under questioning, but we suspect them to be linked to organising, financing and recruiting activities, (rather) than being mere foot-soldiers."
The Tikrit area is at the heart of the "Sunni triangle" from where most anti-coalition attacks are being launched.
Overnight sweeps by the US army in the flashpoint town of Baqubah north of Baghdad also led to the arrest of 10 Iraqis, including a local official of the disbanded Baath party, witnesses said on Saturday.
The US forces raided the al-Tahrir neighbourhood in central Baqubah, the site of frequent skirmishes between US troops and gunmen since the country fell to the US-led coalition on April 9, they said.
Baqubah was the scene of a grenade attack against an Iraqi police station early on Friday that left four policemen wounded. US forces later arrested 15 people in searches at Al-Mafrak, west of Baqubah.
On Thursday, a US soldier died in a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) attack in the town, 65km northeast of Baghdad.
- AFP
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