- BAGHDAD (AFP) - US forces
attacked armed Shiite Muslim groups in Baghdad and sealed off the town
of Fallujah after dozens of people died in mounting opposition to their
year-old military occupation of Iraq.
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- Apache helicopters sprayed fire on units of the Mehdi
Army, the private militia of Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr, which attacked
five truckloads of US soldiers and US-trained Iraqi paramilitaries trying
to enter Al-Showla, a district of western Baghdad.
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- The fighting erupted after the US civilian administrator
of Iraq, Paul Bremer, declared Sadr an outlaw and said the occupying force
"will not tolerate" attempts to supplant its authority.
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- In the nearby squalid slum district of Sadr City, US
troops opened fire on stone-hurling Shiites attending a funeral for some
of the 22 Iraqis killed in fierce fighting there on Sunday.
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- Eight US soldiers also died on Sunday, while 85 Iraqis
and 24 American troops were wounded in running street battles. The US military
said Monday that another three US troops had died since then elsewhere
in Iraq.
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- Dozens of Mehdi Army militants in black uniforms and
armed with assault rifles and grenade launchers stormed the governor's
office in Iraq's second city, Basra, on Monday. Reports from the southern
city said British troops made no attempt to intervene and were nowhere
in sight five hours later.
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- Other Sadr supporters took over the police station and
government buildings in Kufa, 140 kilometres (90 miles) south of Baghdad,
close to the holy city of Najaf, where 20 Iraqis and a Salvadorean solider
in the US-led force died in clashes on Sunday.
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- Sunday saw the bloodiest fighting with Shiites since
the United States and Britain invaded Iraq just over a year ago to topple
the regime of Saddam Hussein.
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- Shiites, who make up about 60 percent of Iraq's population
of 24 million, welcomed the fall of their oppressor Saddam, but have become
frustrated with the pace and scope of political change under US-led occupation.
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- US Marines meanwhile sealed off the Sunni Muslim town
of Fallujah on Monday to capture gunmen who killed four US civilian security
contracters last week and strung up two of their mutilated bodies.
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- A resident of northern Fallujah, Borhan Abed, told AFP
that several people were killed and others wounded when US troops bombed
the town for an hour and a half in the early hours.
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- The Marines also closed the main highway from Baghdad
to Jordan running through Fallujah, which lies about 50 kilometres (30
miles) west of Baghdad in the "Sunni triangle", the region which
was Saddam's powerbase.
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- Marine officers said the operation would last several
days and it was unclear whether they would seize the town centre.
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- "Our concern is precise. We want to get the guys
we are after. We don't want to go in there with guns blazing," said
Lieutenant James Vanzant.
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- The widely publicised mutilation of the bodies of the
US civilians sent shockwaves around the world and senior members of the
US Congress publicly questioned on Sunday whether the June 30 deadline
for handover to Iraqi sovereignty was realistic.
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- "I think we have to have security," Senator
Richard Lugar of Indiana, Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee, told ABC television Sunday.
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- "I'm really haunted by the June 30 problem. But
I just see this as a time in which, suddenly, we give sovereignty to somebody.
And now the question is, to whom? And how do they secure that?" he
asked.
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- The committee's leading Democrat, Senator Joseph Biden
of Delaware, told Fox News the increase in violence could presage civil
war in Iraq.
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- "We're going to end up with worst of all worlds.
We're going to end up with a civil war in Iraq if in fact we decide we
can turn this over, including the bulk of the security, to the Iraqis between
now and then," he said.
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- In Kufa, Moqtada Sadr's chief spokesman, Sheikh Fuad
al-Tarfi, said the Mehdi Army had taken over administrative buildings "to
protect them against looters."
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- He urged police to join the Shiite militia to "restore
order" in the city.
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- But chief US administator Bremer said the actions of
the Medhi Army showed it had "basically placed itself outside the
legal authorities, the coalition and Iraqi officials."
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- Sadr "is attempting to establish his authority in
the place of the legitimate authority. We will not tolerate this. We will
reassert the law and order which the Iraqi people expect," Bremer
told a national security meeting.
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- With US plans for Iraq in disarray, the secretary general
of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, was due to hold talks with Russian President
Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Monday.
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- Russia, one of the five permanent members of the UN Security
Council, was a leading opponent of the war in Iraq and foreign ministry
spokesman Alexander Yakovenko gave a foretaste of the talks when he said
in televised remarks that the United Nations was needed there more than
ever.
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- "The United Nations must have real powers in order
to return to Iraq and work effectively there," he said.
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- http://asia.news.yahoo.com/040405/afp/040405115816int.html
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