IRAQ: Gunmen attack police stations in the southern city of Amarah

Gun battles broke out in Amarah on Friday (October 20) amid reports that the Mehdi Army militia was in total control of the city. Iraq's prime minister Nuri al-Maliki sent an envoy to the southern city as Shi'ite militias battled police there in a sign of the difficulty he faces in reining in powerful sectarian groups. Clashes between Shi'ite militias and Iraqi security forces have killed 15 people and wounded 91 since Thursday (October 19), a security source in Amarah said. A British Army spokesman said the situation remained volatile. The city of Balad, scene of reprisal killings that have left at least 60 dead in the past week, was also on alert again after mortars killed nine people on Thursday, prompting Shi'ite militias to attack two nearby Sunni villages, police said. Baghdad was under a regular Friday curfew, a day after Washington said the results of its two-month-old campaign to curb violence through massive reinforcements had been a disappointment and it was rethinking the plan. The setbacks in the battle for control of Baghdad, which U.S. officials say will decide Iraq's future, and rising U.S. casualties have piled pressure on U.S. President George W. Bush before November mid-term elections. At the same time the Shi'ite-led Iraqi government is struggling to exert its authority over Shi'ite militias blamed for executions and reprisal killings around the country. Prime Minister al-Maliki, who this week met powerful Shi'ite clerics Moqtada al-Sadr and Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani to enlist their support in curbing sectarian violence, ordered his National Security Minister Sherwan al-Waeli to go to Amarah on Friday to try to quell the turmoil. An envoy from Sadr also arrived in Amarah on Friday, according to a security source. The violence in Amarah, a Maysan province where militias and tribes exert huge influence, started after the disappearance of the brother of a senior Mehdi Army leader. Suspecting he had been detained by police, militias attacked police stations with rocket-propelled grenades and rifle fire.

ITN Source | October 21, 2006

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