U.S. bombs Shi’ite militia near Baghdad

BAGHDAD — U.S. warplanes blasted a militia team firing rocket-propelled grenades yesterday, the second day of heavy fighting in a major offensive to drive Shi’ite Mahdi Army militiamen out of Diwaniyah, a farm-belt city south of Baghdad.

North of the capital, in the increasingly dangerous Diyala provincial capital of Baqouba, police reported 21 more bodies dumped in the streets, victims of the intense sectarian warfare. All were shot execution-style and many had been tortured. At least 62 bodies have been found in or near Baqouba since Tuesday.

A total of 58 persons were killed or found dead across Iraq yesterday in the eighth week of the U.S.-Iraqi security crackdown on the capital and surrounding cities and towns.

Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, meanwhile, said government officials from Iraq’s neighbors, the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and representatives of the Group of Eight industrialized nations would meet in Egypt early next month.

The session — originally set for Istanbul — is a follow-up to the international conference held in Baghdad last month during which envoys from Iran and the U.S. spoke directly for the first time in years.

The Egyptian meeting will be held at the Red Sea resort of Sharm el Sheik on May 3 and 4, Mr. Zebari said.

Maj. Gen. Othman Farhood al-Ghanemi, commander of the Iraqi army’s 8th Division, said the U.S.-Iraqi operation to retake Diwaniyah took shape after a three-month crescendo of violence in which at least 58 persons were killed or kidnapped.

In violence leading up to the offensive, many women were reportedly killed after the hard-line fundamentalist militiamen accused them of violating their strict interpretation of Islamic morality.

Gen. al-Ghanemi told the Associated Press that Mahdi Army militiamen were armed with rocket-propelled grenades, Katyusha rockets, Strela anti-aircraft rockets and AK-47 assault rifles.

The militia is loyal to anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

Before the offensive, militants attacked Iraqi and U.S.-led coalition forces 17 times with roadside bombs — some of them armor-piercing explosively formed projectiles (EFP).

The U.S. military accuses Iran of providing militants with the deadly projectiles.

“Although the army now is in the city, gunmen still have an armed presence. This will take time to finish. We are backed by friendly multinational forces, and had it not been for them, we would not have been able to detect and dismantle so many roadside bombs today,” the general said.

Gen. al-Ghanemi said the tipping point in Diwaniyah was March 20, when militiamen attacked and set fire to police roadblocks in 15 southeast neighborhoods and turned them into no-go zones for the authorities.

Much of the Diwaniyah police force is said to be controlled by the Badr Brigade, a rival militia of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the country’s most powerful Shi’ite political party.

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