"...Yo, MudTaco al-Sadarse -- our CIC, GDubya, sez this h'yar town ain't big enough fo' the both of us.........
U.S.-Led Forces Move Into Stronghold of Radical Cleric
By EDWARD WONG Published: May 23, 2004
KARBALA, Iraq, May 23 — Building the pressure on a rebel Shiite cleric, the American military killed at least 36 insurgents loyal to him near a mosque in the southern holy city of Kufa late Saturday and early today, military officials and witnesses said. Soldiers seized a cache of heavy weapons and munitions in the mosque afterward, the military said.
The attack came right after American commanders in Karbala said it appeared as if the militia led by the cleric, Moktada al-Sadr, had cleared out of the shrine area in the city center here. Members of the militia, the Mahdi Army, had been using two holy shrines as shields in their war against the occupiers.
The withdrawal by the insurgents came after American forces evacuated a mosque in downtown Karbala early Friday that they had been using as a forward base. A spokesman for Mr. Sadr said the two sides had reached a deal for a mutual withdrawal of forces from the city center, but American commanders here denied coming to any such agreement. ("..Now is that what you'd call 'SPOOKY', ..or what..."!?!)
It was unclear exactly where the insurgents went. Some residents of Karbala said they had seen militiamen hiding their weapons and leaving town. Another theory held that the insurgents could be regrouping, either in their usual havens in the old city or on the outskirts of Karbala.
But many shops that had been shuttered during the fighting in recent weeks were open again in the morning, and one resident observed that life seemed almost normal. Police began patrolling the old city again for the first time since Mr. Sadr launched his revolt in early April.
"I'm not saying all the Moktada militia have left or are gone or whatever," said Lt. Col. Garry P. Bishop, commander of American forces in Karbala. "But they're not conducting active operations."
Colonel Bishop said he did not intend to send American forces into the shrine area in the near future.
This afternoon, a platoon of combat engineers from the First Armored Division drove through a southern neighborhood of Karbala to gauge infrastructure needs, signaling that the soldiers were trying to move forward with reconstruction projects after nearly three weeks of intense urban warfare in which four American soldiers and at least 250 insurgents were killed.
"Over the next couple of days, we'll work toward assessing the old city," said Lt. Col. John Kem, commander of the 16th Engineer Battalion. "We're still not going into the old city yet. We've just had less than 24 hours of not getting shot at."
The fighting in Kufa, where Mr. Sadr preaches at a shrine every Friday, erupted late Saturday night, as soldiers from the First Armored Division attacked insurgents holed up near the Salah Mosque. The soldiers approached in armored vehicles with air support overhead. The soldiers attacked the mosque area, a nearby mortar position and insurgents posted in a technical college and a building known as Saddam's Palace, the military said in a written statement.
Soldiers killed four militiamen at the mortar position and at least 32 others at the other sites, according to the statement.
Officials at the Salah Mosque said soldiers had forced their way into the building. They pointed out to reporters blood splotches on the walls and on the ground. The soldiers stayed in the mosque until the morning, they said.
In its statement, the American military said that members of the Iraqi Counter-Terrorism Force "entered and cleared the mosque," seizing a .30-caliber machine gun, two 60-millimeter mortar tubes, 12 rocket-propelled grenades, more than 200 82-millimeter mortar rounds and a number of rocket-propelled grenade launchers.
The Iraqi commandos were trained in the city of Babylon by Special Forces soldiers, who use them on mosque raids. On May 12, Special Forces and Iraqi soldiers took the lead in storming the Mukhaiyam Mosque in Karbala, a former stronghold for Mr. Sadr's militia, and attacked the nearby Mukhaiyam Shrine.
nytimes.com
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