Al-Sadar and his thinking!

US aircraft have been carrying out air raids in Baghdad and Basra [AFP]
Al-Sadr aide killed in Najaf
Police have imposed a curfew in the Iraqi city of Najaf after a senior aide to Muqtada al-Sadr, an Shia leader, was shot dead near his home, Iraqi officials said. Riyadh al-Nouri, who was the director of al-Sadr's office in Najaf, was killed as he drove home from Friday prayers in the nearby city of Kufa.
Police set up blockades, ordered people off the streets and closed shops after the incident, a Reuters news agency reporter said.
Haider al-Turfi, another Sadr official in Njafa, said that armed men were waiting for al-Nouri near his home in the city's eastern neighbourhood of al-Adala. "When he arrived from the prayers, they opened fire on him, killing him instantly," Turfi said.
Al-Nouri's sister was married to Sadr's brother Murtada who was killed in 1999.
US 'responsible'
Dr Maha al-Duri, a representative of the Sadr bloc in Iraq's parliament, blamed the US military for the killing.
"This is one of the conspiracies contrived by the US occupation and their collaborators in Iraq against the al-Sadr movement," she told Al Jazeera.
"We strongly condemn the assassination of Sayyid Riyadh al-Nouri, one of the leaders of al-Sadr movement and hold the occupation forces responsible for the assassination."
Al-Duri demanded an investigation into the killing but reaffirmed that al-Sadr's followers were committed to maintaining the ceasefire with Iraqi forces.
"We have proved that we only have a national agenda, despite the continuation of the siege imposed on us," she said.
Along with Sheikh Mustafa al-Yacoubi, another al-Sadr loyalist, he was detained by American forces in April 2004 over the killing of Sheikh Abdul-Majid al-Khoei, a Shia cleric, in Najaf shortly after the US-led invasion.
Those arrests, along with the closing by US authorities of al-Sadr's newspaper, triggered an uprising that engulfed Shia areas of central and southern Iraq.
The two men were released in 2005.
Air raids
Al-Nouri's death came fresh US air raids on Friday killed at least 12 people in Baghdad and Basra amid continued street battles between Shia fighters and Iraqi security forces in the two Iraqi cities.
Six fighters were killed by US aircraft in the southern port city of Basra, hours after a Hellfire missile fired from a drone killed six fighters in the capital, US and British military officials said.
The US military said an unmanned aircraft fired a Hellfire missile and killed six "heavily armed criminals" at around 9:45pm local time (1845 GMT) on Thursday. It said the missile was fired after the drone observed a large group of people with rocket-propelled grenade launchers and mortar tubes. Two previous air strikes announced by the military on Thursday killed six people in similar cricumstances. The strike in Basra happened when US aircraft hit an area in the northern al-Hayaniya district after identifying a group of fighters, Major Tom Holloway, the British spokesman, said. Meanwhile, a rocket apparently aimed at the government and diplomatic Green Zone in Baghdad fell short, crashing into a second-floor room of the Palestine Hotel blowing a hole in the wall.
Basra crackdown
Basra was rocked by fierce clashes last month after Nuri al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister, ordered a crackdown on Shia armed groups, including al-Sadr's Mahdi Army. Battles have raged since Sunday between Iraqi and US forces and Shia fighters from the Mahdi Army in eastern Baghdad's Sadr City. Iraqi officials claim around 80 people have been killed, with scores wounded. Al-Sadr's movement said on Thursday it was "under siege" in the district and warned that its militia was ready to take up arms again, breaking a ceasefire ordered by him last August.

Militant Cleric Postpones Big Baghdad Protest

Michael Kamber for The New York Times By STEPHEN FARRELL and ERICA GOODEPublished: April 9, 2008BAGHDAD

The radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr on Tuesday called off a huge demonstration in Baghdad, citing fears for his supporters’ safety if they
confronted Iraqi government and American forces, while his fighters continued to battle those forces. Baghdad Bureau: War in a Shiite Neighborhood Mr. Sadr’s decision came only 24 hours before a march he had called for the fifth anniversary on Wednesday of the
capture of Baghdad by United States troops, which would have coincided with the second day of testimony to Congress by Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker and Gen.
David H. Petraeus.
As it has been for almost two weeks, Mr. Sadr’s stronghold of Sadr City on Tuesday remained a neighborhood encircled by a ring of American and Iraqi military
steel, its entryways blocked by lines of Humvees and nervous Iraqi soldiers who stood in groups and smoked cigarettes, their AK47s and M-16s slung over their
shoulders.
The sound of heavy gunfire was punctuated every few minutes by heavy bursts of artillery fire, and there were reports that Iraqi forces pushed into central areas,
clashing with fighters of the Mahdi Army militia Mr. Sadr leads, who were trying to stop their advance.
A pair of armored Strykers, resembling giant metal pods, sat silently in Mudhafer Square just outside Sadr City’s main gate, its American crew invisible inside.
Families fleeing the neighborhood with belongings stuffed into plastic bags streamed in one direction, while men returning from work in other areas of the capital
walked in the other, returning to wives and children inside the embattled district.
As shells landed or shooting erupted, pedestrians scattered for cover. Hospital officials in Baghdad said at least 12 people, including three children, had been killed
and 37 wounded in fighting, The Associated Press reported.
Rahim Ali, 40, headed south out of the district clutching the hand of his young daughter, her orange dress a startling flash of color on a drab, trash-strewn street.
“I’m leaving the neighborhood because of the shooting and the victims, and there is random gunfire,” he said, adding that he would stay away “until our God ends this
crisis.”
The overwhelmingly Shiite eastern district is one of three Baghdad areas that have been encircled by troops since heavy fighting in Basra spilled over into the capital
last month. Dozens of Iraqis have been killed as those clashes reignited in recent days.
Even as the two top American officials in Iraq were in Washington outlining what Mr. Crocker termed “signs of progress,” the government of Prime Minister Nuri
Kamal al-Maliki imposed a vehicle ban across the capital for Wednesday’s anniversary, from 5 a.m. until midnight.
Many people interviewed on the outskirts of Sadr City said they were relieved to hear the news. A standoff between a large crowd and American and Iraqi soldiers,
they said, could lead only to more violence.
Three miles southwest of Sadr City, Mr. Sadr’s spokesman, Salah al-Obaidi, held a hastily convened news conference in Paradise Square, where the statue of
Saddam Hussein was toppled in 2003. The turbaned Mr. Obaidi blamed the Iraqi government for the cancellation of the march, saying his movement feared that the
police and soldiers would hurt demonstrators.
Mr. Obaidi said his movement had to take account of “the size of the security deployment made by the government of Maliki.” He added, “That is why I call on our
beloved Iraqi people who wanted to demonstrate against the occupation to postpone it, because I fear for their lives and blood and because, by God, I fear for Iraqi
hands being raised against you.”
Responding to a question, Mr. Obaidi denied that his movement had miscalculated by calling the march in the first place, and then embarrassed itself by having to
abandon it.
He said that despite agreeing to all the conditions imposed by the security forces, the Sadrists “were surprised this morning with the ban imposed by the government
against our sons who were coming to Baghdad.”
Nevertheless, the cancellation suggests that Mr. Sadr has backed off from the latest in a series of confrontations with the government, the most serious being the
heavy Shiite-on-Shiite fighting that broke out in Basra last month when government forces tried to curb armed militias there, principally Mr. Sadr’s.
Mr. Obaidi warned that Mr. Sadr could call off his seven-month cease-fire at any time. The cease-fire is a key ingredient of what General Petraeus termed Iraq’s
“fragile and reversible” security improvement.
“If we need to lift the freeze in order to carry out our goals, objectives, doctrines and religious principles and patriotism, we will do that later,” Mr. Obaidi said.
As he spoke, Sadrist mosque loudspeakers in Sadr City were calling upon the overwhelmingly Shiite district’s population to fight United States forces. The death toll
has left many funeral tents around the district.
Many residents support Mr. Sadr and blame the Iraqi government and the American military for the clashes over the last week.
“Tell the American officials that we got hurt a lot during this period, and they need to help us,” said Salah Turki, 37, adding that some of those who were killed in the
fighting were “simple poor people like us.”
Jassim Hatem, 55, said that for more than a week, since a curfew prevented any vehicles from entering or leaving Sadr City, he had walked eight miles every day to
his job as a tea seller.
Supplies of food in Sadr City are short; a huge fire in the neighborhood’s Jameela market, set off by a mortar or rocket strike on Monday, has worsened the
situation. Mr. Hatem said he worried about feeding his children but said he could not afford to leave.
“Where would I go?” he asked. “I’ll try to stay here with my nine kids, and if I have enough bread for them I will feed them and if not, they will go to sleep without
food.”
An Iraqi military spokesman, Brig. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi, said 82 militants, 36 civilians and 37 soldiers had been killed since March 16 during fighting in
Baghdad, mostly in Sadr City, The Associated Press reported.
The United States military said one soldier was killed Tuesday in Baghdad by a bomb that struck his vehicle in northeast Baghdad, where American forces have been
fighting the Sadrists. It also said three airstrikes had hit mortar-launching sites in the same area, killing 12 suspected fighters.
Mudhafer al-Husaini, Ahmad Fadam, Muhammed al-Obaidi and other Iraqi employees of The New York Times contributed reporting.