Rebel cleric Muqtada al-Sadr called on his supporters Thursday to rise up anew against U.S.-led security forces, his spokesman announced after a fragile two-month truce in the holy city of Najaf ended with clashes that brought down a U.S. helicopter.
"If they want it to be war, let it be," said Ghalib Hashim Jazaeri, the police chief in Najaf. "We have enough men and equipment to defeat them."
"We are inside the city," he said into his radio as gunfire and mortars exploded in the city. "We are chasing them.
... in Baghdad, Interior Minister Falah Naqib pledged to find and arrest al-Sadr. "We will not negotiate," he said at a news conference. "We will fight these militias. We have power to stop these people, and we'll kick them out of the country."
Naqib said the decision for Iraqi forces to fight al-Sadr's militia came from the governor of Najaf province, not the U.S. military. On that point, al-Sadr's spokesman agreed.
"We were forced to do this after the governor started his stupid idea to invade the city," al-Shaibany said. |