KARBALA, Iraq — Radical Shi’ite cleric Sheik Muqtada al-Sadr threatened yesterday to unleash suicide bombers if U.S. troops move against him in Iraq’s holiest Shi’ite city, and his militiamen attacked a Bulgarian convoy, killing a soldier.
U.S. forces massed on the outskirts of Najaf have said they have no intention of moving in for the time being to capture Sheik al-Sadr — fully aware that an American incursion into the holy city could spark a wave of outrage among Iraq’s Shi’ite majority.
But the cleric’s comments and the bloody clash in the nearby city of Karbala were a show of defiance amid off-and-on negotiations aimed at trying to resolve the standoff. The Karbala fighting brought the first coalition death in fighting with al-Sadr followers in more than a week.
“Some of the [holy warrior] brothers have told me they want to carry out martyrdom attacks, but I am postponing this,” Sheik al-Sadr told thousands of worshippers during his weekly Friday prayer sermon at the main mosque in Kufa, near Najaf.
“When we are forced to do so and when our city and holy sites are attacked, we will all be time bombs in the face of the enemy,” he said.
The soldier killed in the Karbala battle was the sixth Bulgarian killed in Iraq.
Suicide bombings would be a new tactic for Sheik al-Sadr, whose followers launched a bloody revolt in early April, attacking coalition troops across the south. Sheik al-Sadr, however, is known for blustery rhetoric and threats and is under pressure from moderate Shi’ite clerics to resolve the standoff.
In his sermon, Sheik al-Sadr condemned suicide bombings Wednesday in the southern city of Basra because they targeted civilians and Iraqi police. The death toll from those attacks rose to 74, including at least 16 children killed when their school buses were incinerated in the blasts.
Meanwhile, police in Basra arrested five Iraqis believed linked to the al Qaeda terrorist network and suspected in the bombings. The five men were captured with nearly 25 tons of TNT, and police were looking for another car bomb they suspected was somewhere in the city, said Basra’s police intelligence chief, Khalaf al-Badran.
In central Iraq, a U.S. soldier was killed yesterday by a roadside bomb near the town of Samarra, the military said. His death brought to 101 the number of U.S. troops killed in Iraq since the beginning of April. Since March 2003, 709 servicemen have died in the Iraq campaign.
Also yesterday, the top U.S. administrator in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, confirmed a change in policy allowing the new Iraqi army to begin recruiting former high-level officers from Saddam Hussein’s disbanded military — and he eased a ban on former Ba’ath Party members, allowing thousands of teachers and professors to return to work in schools.
While the standoff with Sheik al-Sadr is on hold, U.S. commanders repeated warnings that a renewed Marine assault on the central Sunni city of Fallujah could come soon unless guerrillas in the city abide by a call to surrender heavy weapons in their arsenals.
For the past two days, only a handful of weapons have been turned in — most of them “junk,” according to Marines, including rusted mortar shells and dud rockets.
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