BAGHDAD, Iraq, April 11, 2008
Al-Sadr's Senior Aide Assassinated
Gunmen Kill Iraqi Shiite Cleric's Director Of Office At Najaf Headquarters
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Play CBS Video Video Petraeus Voices Frustration Katie Couric speaks with Gen. David Petraeus following two days of congressional hearings on Iraq which resulted in President Bush's announcing a stop to all U.S. troop withdrawals.
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Video Bush Halts Troop Withdrawal President Bush has taken the advice of his top commander in Iraq and put a stop to troop withdrawals from Iraq after July. Susan Roberts reports.
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Muqtada al-Sadr has his headquarters in Najaf, but the shrines in that city are dominated by a rival Shiite group and most of his followers are concentrated in Kufa. (AP Photo/Alaa al-Marjani)
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The killing threatened to raise tensions amid a violent standoff between al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia and the U.S.-backed Iraqi government.
In a statement Friday, al-Sadr blamed the United States and the Iraqi government for the death of Riyadh al-Nouri, the director of al-Sadr's office in Najaf. Al-Sadr urges his followers to be "patient."
Al-Nouri was gunned down as he drove home after attending Friday prayers in the adjacent city of Kufa, a police officer and a local Sadrist official said. Both spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
Al-Sadr has his headquarters in Najaf, but the shrines in that city are dominated by a rival Shiite group and most of his followers are concentrated in Kufa.
Al-Nouri and a top al-Sadr lieutenant, Sheik Mustafa al-Yacoubi, were detained by American forces in April 2004 in the killing a year earlier of a moderate Shiite cleric, Sheik Abdul-Majid al-Khoei, in Najaf shortly after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. An arrest warrant was issued for al-Sadr himself but never served.
That along with the closing by U.S. authorities of al-Sadr's newspaper triggered a massive uprising that engulfed Shiite areas of central and southern Iraq. Several thousand people were killed before the rebellion was finally suppressed, and the two men were released in 2005.
Al-Sadr's spokesman in Najaf, Salah al-Obeidi, said the United States bore responsibility for Friday's killing because of its continued presence in Iraq. Al-Obeidi said the cleric appealed for calm and ordered his followers "not to be dragged into others' plots."
Police said al-Nouri was driving his car alone and had passed through two of their checkpoints before heading for the residential part of the city in which he lived. The gunmen were waiting for near his home, where no security forces were present.
An overnight curfew also was announced in the southern Shiite city of Hillah.
In other developments:
Meanwhile, sporadic clashes between Iraqi security forces and militia fighters broke out for a sixth day in the Mahdi Army strongholds of Baghdad's Sadr City and the southern port city of Basra.
And a rocket apparently aimed at the U.S.-protected Green Zone also fell short, crashing into a second-floor room and blowing a hole in the wall of the Palestine Hotel in central Baghdad. Police said three people were killed and seven wounded, mainly pedestrians on the street below.
U.S. airstrikes also killed 12 more suspected militants.
An unmanned drone fired on a group of gunmen carrying grenades and mortars overnight in Sadr City, killing six of them, the U.S. military said.
Armed drones are routinely used for long air patrols over the capital. They rely on their sensors to pick up militant activity during the night, and insurgents do not have air defenses capable of shooting down the slow-moving aircraft.
And the British military said a helicopter had hit a group of gunmen in the Hayaniyah district of central Basra overnight, killing six of them.
"They were positively identified as an active mortar team," British military spokesman Maj. Tom Holloway said.
The southern port city was the scene of fierce combat when Iraqi government forces launched a weeklong offensive against Shiite militias on March 25. British forces also took part in the fighting.
But that violence has ebbed. On Friday, authorities lifted a two-week ban on vehicle movement in Baghdad's mainly Shiite Shula neighborhood. A similar ban on vehicles in Sadr City district is scheduled to be lifted on Saturday.
Violence in Iraq had declined last year and early this year following a seven-month-old cease-fire by al-Sadr, an influx of American troops and a Sunni revolt against al Qaeda in Iraq.
But the recent government crackdown on the Mahdi Army has provoked fierce retaliation, underscoring the fragility of the security gains.
Separately, the U.S. military said Friday that the pullout of the five brigades that comprised last year's buildup of U.S. forces into Iraq is continuing with the redeployment of the 4th Brigade of the First Infantry Division back to Fort Riley in Kansas. The 4th Brigade was based in southern Baghdad, a district of about 1.2 million people.
All five surge brigades are due to return home by the end of July, leaving about 140,000 U.S. troops in Iraq.
Also Friday, a suicide car bomber struck a police checkpoint at an entrance to the Anbar province capital of Ramadi, killing three officers and wounding five others, police said.
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The secrets of tennis legend 
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See all 35 CommentsIraq''''s Mujahedeen Freedom Fighters if you will...
Posted by FloydZepp at 06:48 AM : Apr 12, 2008
+ report abuse
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nice head! tic tac?
Sadr--who is no fool--knows this and is conserving his forces for that eventuality, knowing that the low intensity warfare will eventually make the Occupation unsustainable. Now, that Admiral Fallon and his truce have been overturned by Bush and his heel hound, Betrayus, the fight will be escalated and more provocations made.
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Posted by heraldtkel at 09:58 PM : Apr 11, 2008
-Your website sucks. It has no interesting content.
Posted by jamesm12341 at 01:26 PM : Apr 11, 2008
It skipped a generation and got you...
Posted by terrorislamh at 04:03 PM : Apr 11, 2008
If it was legal then why did Powell keep going back to the UN trying to justify an invasion? Why send in weapon inspectors?
Readers who need to "trust but verify" (i.e., to corroborate) for themselves that the experts'' overwhelming opinion is exactly as stated above should read a document entitled "15 January 2003." (Find it by scrolling down approximately one-fourth of the way, after you''ve clicked onto this ES website: http://www.eurolegal.org/useur/bbiraqwar.htm "The Legality Of The Iraq War" .) Why?
That document was drafted and signed by the world''s foremost international law experts -- the prestigious International Commission of International Law Jurists -- to provide ultimate proof of their authoritative opinion concerning the legal status of war against Iraq. Furthermore, this large body of eminent international law experts explicitly stated that they''d drafted their legal document in order to advise Messrs. Bush and Blair prior to the invasion: (1) that it would be blatantly illegal under international law for the Anglo-American belligerents to invade Iraq; and (2) that their joint decision as Commanders-in-Chief to commence hostilities would constitute prosecutable war crimes.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article6917.htm
That should be "US''s support of g*a*y*s"
I still say you can hear stuff as bad Rev. Wright says at any Southern Baptist church on any given Sunday. Remember those stalwarts of jingoism Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell blamed 9/11 on the US''s support of ***.
Rasmussen polls are run by "Scott Rasmussen, an Evangelical Christian and president of the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association, a not-for-profit corporation with historic ties to the Methodist Church and the Wesleyan tradition." I don''t feel that they are truly representative.
the world will be a way better place without him,,,
Posted by terrorislamh
Remember this whole thing started because we took out that fat worthless fascist nazi terrorislamist pig Saddam. Things haven''t exactly been a bed of roses since then, I think his Mahdi army might become a truly Mad Army without their leader in control.
-May his 72 virgins have STD''''s.
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Posted by mbcsmith at 10:12 AM : Apr 11, 2008
- Condomleesa Rice''s?
Come back to Iraq Sadr and voice your anger in person, please.
What moral right does anyone have to continue the Iraq war? Those of us who permit this injustice to continue either by design or compliancy are enablers sharing in these crimes!
What is the difference in the Nazis trying to stamp out the Jews and Bush, Cheney, and the Neocons killing hundreds of thousands of the people of Islam to get at their Oil and Natural Gas?
Posted by jamesm12341"
You just proved my point, assclown.
Posted by jamesm12341"
I know you are but what am I!
Geez...the Republican party''s been taken over by five year olds.
Posted by LibH8er at 11:12 AM : Apr 11, 2008"
Well there''s a stupid comment. All the libs want is an end to the war one way or the other, either win it or get out. This BS that Patreaus is spewing is to develop an exit strategy for one person...Bush. So far the surge hasn''t done what it was supposed to do so what''s next a bigger surge? Why is it you neo-cons can only see force as the answer to a problem? Why not listen to all the Generals (who were promptly fired for saying so) that there is no military solution to Iraq, it has to be diplomatic and it has to involve the countries in the region. Then we can get back to doing what we should have been doing over the pat 6 years...hunting down Osama Bin Laden...remember him?
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