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CIVILIAN TOLL: A wounded child crying while comforted by his mother at a hospital in Baghdad's impoverished Sadr City on Wednesday as fighting between Sadr loyalists and Iraqi government forces raged on. At least 100 people have died so far. -- PHOTO: AFP
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BASRA - A FRESH wave of violence threatens to engulf Iraq after an ultimatum from Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki for militiamen fighting government forces in southern Iraq to surrender by today was met with mass defiance.
Hundreds of thousands of supporters of radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr marched in Baghdad yesterday to protest against a three-day-old crackdown on his followers centred on Basra. They also called for the downfall of the US-backed Iraqi government.
Now, with Washington planning to cut its 160,000-strong force by 20,000 over the next four months, the Iraqi government is under pressure to show it can impose its will.
Sadr, a fiery anti-US preacher who twice led revolts against American forces in 2004, won Washington's praise last year for helping curb violence by calling a ceasefire.
His aides say the ceasefire is still formally in place, although it has effectively been shattered by fighting which has claimed at least 100 lives so far and is threatening to spread.
He has also called on his followers to stage a campaign of 'civil disobedience', forcing schools, universities and shops to shut, and has threatened to declare a countrywide 'civil revolt' if the crackdown is not halted.
In the Sadr City district of Baghdad, crowds chanted: 'Maliki you are a coward! Maliki is an American agent! Leave the government, Maliki! How can you strike Basra?'
The authorities have imposed curfews across southern Iraq in an effort to halt the spread of violence following the largest military offensive carried out by Iraqi forces independent of major support from US or British combat units.
But saboteurs blew up one of Iraq's two main oil export pipelines from Basra yesterday, cutting off a third of the exports from the city which provides 80 per cent of the government's revenue, while a massive mortar bombardment struck the main riverside police base at Basra palace.
Clashes have also spread in the past two days to the southern cities of Kut, Hilla, Diwaniya, Amara and Kerbala, as well as several Shi'ite neighbourhoods of Baghdad.
'We have been living for the last hours in hell,' said Basra resident Faris Hayder, 28.
'We haven't seen anything like this since the foreign troops arrived in 2003.'
Meanwhile, Basra's police chief survived an assassination attempt overnight when a roadside bomb killed three of his bodyguards.
An Interior Ministry source said 51 people had been killed and more than 200 wounded in the first two days of the Basra fighting.
Mr Abdul Hanin al-Imara, police chief in Wasit, another volatile southern province, said 40 people had been killed and 75 wounded in clashes there. US warplanes hovered in the sky over the provincial capital Kut.
Mortar bombs, most apparently fired from Sadr City, have also exploded across Baghdad for days.
Mr Maliki, who has travelled to Basra to personally oversee the crackdown, has cancelled plans to attend an Arab summit in Damascus tomorrow.
REUTERS, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
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