21 killed, Sadr leader arrested, raids on others (2nd Roundup)

May 19, 2007, 14:07 GMT

Baghdad - Violence continued in parts of Iraq on Saturday, with the killing of 18 civilians and at least three Iraqi soldiers, the arrest of 152 militants and the arrest of a leading Sadr movement figure.

Unidentified gunmen in Iraqi army uniforms shot dead 13 civilians in a village near the town of Mindli in Diyala province on Saturday morning, the independent Voices of Iraq news agency reported quoting a police source.

The town is located 80 kilometres south of the provincial capital Baquba, 60 kilometres north of Baghdad.

In a second attack in Diyala on Saturday, gunmen opened fire on a civilian vehicle in the Khalis district of Baquba, killing at least four people and wounding two others before escaping, an Iraqi security source said.

Iraqi security forces on Saturday announced they had killed four gunmen and arrested 152 suspected militants in several areas during a combat mission in various parts of Baghdad.

Three Iraqi soldiers were killed and 12 wounded during the operation, Voices of Iraq said, quoting from a statement by the Baghdad operations command.

Another Iraqi was killed and four others wounded when a suicide bomber driving a car bomb blew himself up near an Iraqi checkpoint in Yarmouk suburbs in western Baghdad on Saturday, according to an Iraqi police source.

Three Iraqi children were killed and four others and an elderly woman were seriously wounded in an explosion caused by a hand grenade which the children had found on a rubbish dump, police said. The incidence occurred in Ziqar province, about 390 kilometres south of Baghdad.

British forces were meanwhile reported to have arrested a leading figure from the Sadr movement, which is led by Shiite cleric and militia leader Moqtada al-Sadr.

'British forces this morning arrested Sheikh Aws al-Khafaji at Basra airport while he was on his way to travel from Iraq,' a source told Voices of Iraq. Another source said the arrest took place in the departures hall of the airport.

Al-Khafaji was appointed by al-Sadr to as the Friday sermon imam in the southern Iraqi city of Nassiriyah.

Reports of his arrest come a day after Iraqi security forces raided the houses of 10 officials of the Sadr movement and arrested several of their relatives in Hindiya district, near Karbala about 108 kilometres south west of Baghdad, Voices of Iraq reported.

Voices of Iraq quoted a source from al-Sadr's office confirming the arrest but providing no names or saying whether the officials were home at the time of the raids.

The source also gave no reason for the arrest of their relatives. Sadr occupies 30 seats in the 275-seat Iraqi parliament under the umbrella of the Mahdi Army, the largest armed militia in Iraq.

The political movement of al-Sadr, a strong critic of the United States has been at loggerheads with Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's government over to al-Maliki's refusal to define a timetable for the pullout of US troops from Iraq.

In further political developments, Iraq requested the US and Iran to exclude the Iranian nuclear programme and Shiite Lebanese Hezbollah group from the upcoming Iranian-US talks due to be held in Baghdad, press reports said Saturday.

The US and Iran were expected to discuss the issue of weapons leaked from Iran to groups defined as 'terrorist' by the US, the Mujahedin al-Khalq organization, US manoeuvres in the Gulf and the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq, according to the state-run al- Sabah newspaper.

Al-Khalq is a militant political party that advocates overthrowing the government in the Islamic Republic of Iran and replacing it with its own leadership.

Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari is expected to represent Iraq in the talks which are scheduled to take place at the headquarters of the Iraqi Foreign Ministry.

US Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker was to meet with Iranian representatives in Baghdad on May 28 amid US accusations that Tehran has been fomenting violence in Iraq by providing material support to Shiite militant groups responsible for attacks on US soldiers as well as aggravating Shiite and Sunni tensions.

The US and Iran severed formal diplomatic relations in 1980, and discussions in Baghdad are believed to be the highest contact between the two governments in years.

On Friday, a cleric close to Iraqi Shiite leader Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani said that the talks were 'the first promising step for free and direct bilateral talks' between the two adversaries.

Since the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, al-Sistani has been playing an increasing political role in Iraq. Western media have called him the 'most influential' figure in post-invasion Iraq.

In his Friday sermon in a mosque in the holy city of Najaf, 140 kilometres south of Baghdad, Shiite Imam Sadr Eddin al-Qabanji expressed hopes that the Iranian-US talks would lead to peace between US and Iran amid regional concerns over a potential war.

Al-Qabanji added that although these talks would be focused on Iraq, Iraqis themselves had to have the final say on Iraqi affairs.

US-led coalition forces on Saturday announced the detention of nine suspects in the May 12 kidnapping of three US soldiers as search operations for the missing soldiers continued.

The nine were detained during a raid Saturday morning near the western city of Amiriyah. The soldiers were reported missing after an attack to the west of the town of Mahmudiya, 35 kilometres south of Baghdad, during which four servicemen and an Iraqi were killed.

Last Sunday, a militant group named the Iraqi Islamic State published a statement on the internet, claiming to be holding hostage the three 'soldiers of the cross.'