61 killed in Shiite city; Iraq sends reinforcements
POSTED: 12:16 p.m. EDT, August 28, 2006
Adjust font size:
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- The Iraqi Defense Ministry on Monday was sending reinforcements to the Shiite city of Diwaniya to try to stem ongoing clashes that have resulted in the deaths of 23 Iraqi soldiers and 38 militia fighters, an Iraqi army official said.
The fighting, which began late Sunday, has also left 40 people wounded.
The clashes erupted after Iraqi soldiers began searching various parts of Diwaniya, a stronghold of the Mehdi militia, which is loyal to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
Diwaniya, about 85 miles (160 kilometers) south of Baghdad, is in Qadisiya Province.
Also Monday, at least 11 people were killed and 63 others wounded when a suicide car bomb detonated at an Iraqi police checkpoint near the Interior Ministry Monday morning, Baghdad emergency police said.
Britain's defense secretary, meanwhile, said that security had improved in southern Iraq, Reuters reported. His Iraqi counterpart predicted that formal control of another province in the region, Dhi Qar province, would be handed back to Iraq soon. (Full story)
Prime minister does not foresee civil war
On Sunday, nearly 50 Iraqis were killed in sectarian violence. But despite the high death toll, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said he did not foresee a civil war in Iraq and that violence in his country was abating.
"In Iraq, we'll never be in civil war," al-Maliki told CNN's "Late Edition" on Sunday.
Attacks on American troops around the Iraqi capital Sunday left seven soldiers dead, the U.S. command in Baghdad reported.
Other violence nationwide left more than 130 wounded, local authorities said.
One U.S. soldier was killed by gunfire in eastern Baghdad about 2 p.m. Sunday (6 a.m. ET), while two others were killed by a roadside bomb on the city's west side about half an hour later, according to a U.S. military statement.
The other four soldiers died about 3 p.m., when a roadside bomb struck their vehicle north of Baghdad, the military reported.
U.S. commanders have poured thousands of additional troops into Baghdad in recent weeks in hopes of rolling back sectarian killings that have left thousands of Iraqis dead.
The latest combat deaths bring the number of U.S. troops killed in Iraq to 2,622. Seven American civilian contractors of the military also have died in the conflict.
Despite Health Ministry figures that put the number of Iraqi civilians killed in July at about 3,400 -- more than double the 1,600 killed in January -- the prime minister said violence was decreasing in his country.
Al-Maliki did not dispute figures published in "The Economist" magazine that put unemployment at as high as 40 percent, with double-digit inflation and as much as 20 percent of the population in poverty.
"But this is a new Iraq, and inherited from the previous regime who left unemployment and destruction," said al-Maliki, who won power in December's elections.
Asked when coalition troops might leave, the Iraqi leader was equivocal.
"It could be a year or less, or a few months," he said. "This has to do with the -- with our success of the democratic -- or the political process in Iraq, and to have the security agencies to protect this process."
Sen. Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat, disagreed with al-Maliki's assessment of the state of affairs in Iraq, saying the country was "on the verge of civil war right now," if not already involved in one.
Levin, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, called for the United States to set a date to begin withdrawing its forces.
"We cannot save the Iraqis from themselves," he told CNN. "They're the ones that have got to decide -- do they want a civil war, or do they want a nation?"
Levin said President Bush should "prod" the Iraqis to take responsibility for their own security.
"The only chance they have of defeating the insurgents is if they come together politically," he said.
But Republican Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana said withdrawal of coalition forces could make an already bad situation worse.
"The idea, somehow, that civil war means that we leave is a non-starter, because Iraq's physical integrity is important," said Lugar, the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee.
"By that I mean, if Iraq deteriorates and Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds begin picking up partners in other countries, then we have a conflagration that dwarfs anything which is occurring presently in the deteriorating problems of Iraq." |
