New Tension With Iraqi Militia
Iraqi security forces fired warning shots and barred vehicle traffic leading to Kufa on Friday, fearing an outbreak of violence as hundreds of worshippers descended on the holy city for the first weekly prayers since radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr relinquished control of its revered shrine under a peace deal.
Separately, France said it had received word that two French reporters held captive in Iraq were alive while one of their employers claimed the kidnappers had handed them over to an Iraqi opposition group, raising hopes that the hostages could soon be released.
Also Friday, firefighters fought a massive oil pipeline fire that raged in Riyadh about 40 miles southwest of the northern city of Kirkuk, a day after saboteurs detonated explosives on the line linking fields near Kirkuk with the oil refinery of Beiji, said Maj. Gen. Anwar Mohammed Amin of the Iraqi National Guard.
"It is the biggest sabotage operation on the oil installations in Kirkuk since the (American) invasion," Amin said.
In other developments:
"What we have to do is to defeat this insurgency," Powell said in an interview Wednesday in Panama to Panama's TVN Channel 2. "Let's remember what is causing this trouble. It's not the United States. It's not the coalition forces that are there."
Al-Sadr, a youthful cleric scorned by mainstream Shiite clergy but with a following among impoverished members of the country's Shiite majority, has twice led his militia against U.S. troops, once in April and again earlier this month. Both episodes are believed to have left hundreds of militants and several coalition soldiers dead.
Gunmen loyal to al-Sadr were upset this week when Iraqi interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi reneged on a peace deal, according to The New York Times.
Iraqi police and national guardsmen set up checkpoints, barring all cars from entering the city and limiting the number of worshippers allowed in. Nevertheless, about 2000 of al-Sadr's followers held the prayers on the street in front of the mosque, setting up a pulpit on the median strip. Worshippers lined the street.
Ahmed al-Shaibani, an al-Sadr aide, accused police forces of arresting dozens of the cleric's followers in Kufa and the nearby city of Najaf, which was devastated by three weeks of bitter fighting between U.S. forces and al-Sadr's Mahdi militia that ended last week.
Despite the peace deal in Najaf, many members of al-Sadr's militia are thought to have returned with their weapons to their Baghdad stronghold of Sadr City and the cleric's representatives and Iraq's interim government have been seeking common ground to end fighting there.
"We consider ourselves to be in a state of war against the Iraqi police" al-Shaibani said.
In Najaf, dozens of protesters chanted slogans denouncing al-Sadr and blaming him for the destruction. They also demanded that al-Sadr and his Mahdi militiamen leave the city.
Sheik Jaber al-Khafaji delivered al-Sadr's sermon on his behalf, condemning the kidnapping of the journalists and urging their quick release.
"This is inhumane and I ask that it doesn't be repeated in the future," the al-Sadr sermon said. "You should know that such actions are not part of the Iraqi resistance. … They tarnish the image of the Iraqi resistance."
Jean de Belot, managing editor of Le Figaro newspaper, said the militants who claimed to be holding the French reporters, Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot, had handed them over to an Iraqi Sunni Muslim opposition group.
He said the opposition group favors the release of the hostages, but he stressed the status of the two Frenchmen wasn't completely clear.
A militant group calling itself "The Islamic Army of Iraq" said it had kidnapped the reporters and demanded that France lift its headscarf ban, but the government refused. Malbrunot, 41, reports for the daily Le Figaro and Chesnot, 37, is with Radio France International. They were last heard from on Aug. 19 as they set off for the southern city of Najaf. Their Syrian driver also vanished.
Militants waging a violent 16-month insurgency in Iraq have increasingly turned to kidnapping foreigners here as part of an effort to drive out coalition forces and contractors. In the past week, militant have killed an Italian journalist and 12 Nepalese workers, while seven truckers from India, Kenya and Egypt were released after their employer paid a $500,000 ransom. Three Macedonian contractors disappeared in Iraq 10 days ago. Iraqi officials have been unable to confirm whether they were kidnapped.
In Nepal's capital of Katmandu, a shoot-on-sight curfew imposed to prevent riots and violent protests over the killing of the 12 Nepalese workers entered its third day Friday.
