U.S. Pounds Iraq Insurgent Hotbed
A U.S. jet fired missiles Friday in the Sunni insurgent stronghold of Fallujah, the fourth day of attacks targeting the city outside of the Iraqi interim government's control, officials said.
One man was killed in the attack, said Dr. Ahmed Thaer of the Fallujah General Hospital. The attack followed airstrikes Thursday that reportedly killed nine people in Fallujah and dozens more in the northern town of Tal Afar, also one of the cities that has fallen under insurgent control and become a "no-go" zone for U.S. troops.
A leading Shiite Muslim cleric Friday criticized the heavy use of force by the U.S. military against insurgents in Tal Afar, saying the Americans caused "catastrophes" that could have been avoided if Iraqis had been in charge of security.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Abdel-Aziz al-Hakim, who is close to Iraq's leading Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, said Iraqi security forces would be in a better position to deal with the local population.
Meanwhile, in Fallujah, there was no evidence that Thursday's attack got its target. Instead, locals said, it only whipped up new anger in Fallujah, which is among a handful of Sunni cities that have fallen under insurgent control.
The reaction of people in Fallujah to strikes like this one suggests that the city may well prove the toughest to take back.
"Our faith has been strengthened by the fight against the Americans," said Abu Mohammed, a 40-year-old cleric who refused to give his full name. "We feel in danger. This is an infidel occupation that wants to destroy Islam. We must fight."
In other developments:
Late Thursday, the regional government's television station reported U.S. and Iraqi government forces had agreed to allow medical teams to enter Tal Afar to care for people wounded from the airstrikes there, but that military operations would continue "until the city is liberated from outsiders and saboteurs so that peace can be restored."
U.S. and Iraqi authorities lost control of Fallujah after U.S. Marines ended a three-week siege last April and turned the city over to a U.S.-sanctioned force, the Fallujah Brigade, which has now all but disappeared.
Restoring government control to major cities is essential if the country is to hold national elections by the end of January.
Before dawn Friday, Fallujah residents reported hearing strong explosions in the north of the city.
Using a different strategy, American and Iraqi forces entered the central city of Samarra for the first time in months under an agreement with local leaders to restore central government control peacefully.
A member of the Samarra council, Raad Hatem, said the deal called for the appointment of a new mayor and police chief and for reconstruction to begin next week. In return, Samarra residents agreed to remove guns from the streets. The Americans pledged to stop raiding private homes.
The troops that entered the city will maintain joint traffic control points in the city and will also open the Samarra Bridge.
Contacts are under way between Fallujah representatives and the interim government of Prime Minister Ayad Allawi to restore some degree of control over the city. The Fallujah residents want the U.S. attacks to stop and the Americans to pay compensation to people killed in attacks.
Allawi wants city officials to hand over al Qaeda-linked terrorists that he and the Americans say are in Fallujah.
Relative calm returned to much of the Shiite Muslim heartland after an agreement negotiated last month by al-Sistani. The agreement brought an end to weeks of fighting between U.S. troops and Shiite militiamen loyal to radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
Meanwhile, reports are emerging about a hardline religious court operated by al-Sadr's office. The court stopped functioning when the cleric's militia returned control of Najaf's Old City to Iraqi police late last month.
To al-Sadr's aides, the court and others they ran elsewhere under its auspices were an attempt to apply their interpretation of Islamic justice to a lawless society, but they say all have been shut down.
Many of those held by the court disagree.
"These are lies, lies, lies," said Muslim al-Senobli. "By God, they are monsters."
Al-Senobli said he was taken to the court on unfounded accusations of helping police. "They destroyed me," he said, punching the air with his fists to mimic his jailers, adding he was released only after his tribe threatened to cause al-Sadr's followers problems.
Militiamen deny abusing prisoners, though some acknowledge flogging was one of the sentences meted out by the court. They also say the court never sentenced offenders to death, but al-Senobli and others say they know people who died from torture.
Many outsiders heard about the Najaf court for the first time when television stations beamed images of at least 13 bodies that police said were found after many of al-Sadr's militiamen left last month.
On Friday, about 1,000 protesters marched through Najaf's old quarter Friday to demand that the Iraqi government investigate the court and punish those in charge of it. They also demanded that al-Sadr leave Najaf.
Chanting, "Muqtada, the trash, is a leader of looters," the demonstrators walked past buildings hit by three weeks of fighting and insisted that al-Sadr's office be shut down. Iraqi soldiers kept the protesters from marching to al-Sadr's office.