Hundreds of U.S. Army troops pushed deep inside rebel Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr’s stronghold of Kufa early Sunday, seizing a weapons cache and killing guerrilla fighters dug in at a mosque.
The night-shrouded military move came after a suicide car bomber Saturday targeted the home of a senior Iraqi official in Baghdad, injuring the official and his wife and killing four others. The attack came five days after another car bombing killed the president of the Iraqi Governing Council.
Backed by M1-A1 Abrams tanks and an AC-130 gunship, the U.S. forces entered Kufa after a bombardment of heavy artillery. Beneath a sliver of moon on a chilly summer night, the soldiers rumbled through dark, forbidding alleyways lined by date palms and two-story homes.
Red tracer rounds flecked the sky, machine-gun fire rattled the city and a plume of smoke hung over a neighborhood.
Their target was Al-Salam mosque, a green-domed edifice on the city’s north side. It was believed to be a base for Sadr’s al-Mahdi militia. U.S. commanders said 16 fighters were killed near the mosque, including 12 who were part of a rocket-propelled grenade team dug into bunkers near the outer walls.
Four gunmen were killed inside, and one man was detained. At least 10 al-Mahdi fighters were killed in a separate clash. There were no U.S. casualties.
At the mosque, “the fight lasted approximately 20 minutes, [with] fairly heavy fighting on the outside,” said a U.S. Special Forces officer who declined to give his name. “Once we got inside, we had overwhelming fighting power.”
Members of the new Iraqi Counterterrorism Force led the raid inside the mosque, along with U.S. Special Forces soldiers, the officer said.
The commander of the Iraqi unit said of the guerrilla fighters, “You can’t call them an army. They’re a bunch of disgruntled young men.”
Damage at the mosque appeared to be minimal. Two huge doors lay in the dirt at the entry, but the minaret was unscathed.
Weapons cache
Inside the mosque, troops discovered a weapons cache that included 200 mortar and rocket rounds, seven RPG launchers and 15 grenades, mortars with tubes and tripods, and about 12 AK-47 assault rifles with several thousand rounds of ammunition.
In one brick room, RPGs were piled against a wall next to a .30-caliber machine gun. A black al-Mahdi flag was propped against a wall.
The mission was part of a U.S. strategy to pressure al-Mahdi army and potentially pave the way for a peaceful resolution to the standoff.
“Right now we are not going after Sadr,” said Lt. Col. Pat White, who noted that the mission was the first reconnaissance push into Kufa.
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He also said the weapons find was “proof they’re hiding stuff in mosques.” Several schools also were searched, but no weapons were found, White said.
U.S. troops pulled out of the city before daylight Sunday.
In Baghdad, Saturday’s bombing wounded Abdul-Jabbar Youssef al-Sheikhli, Iraq’s deputy interior minister in charge of security, and his wife, witnesses said. At least three police officers apparently guarding the minister’s house and one civilian were killed in the powerful blast, which ignited fires and hurled two cars.
The car bomb exploded five days after Izzadine Saleem, the president of the Iraqi Governing Council, was killed in a suicide bomb attack as he waited to enter the American headquarters known as the Green Zone.
“It would seem that the criminals do not want the law to prevail or the security men to implement it,” Iraq’s interior minister, Samir Shaker Mahmoud al-Sumeidi, said at the scene of the blast Saturday. “I want every honorable man in this country to condemn this crime.”
A previously unknown group calling itself Monotheism and Jihad claimed responsibility for the attack, which it said was carried out by a Syrian national. The group may be connected to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian militant with links to Al Qaeda who is wanted by U.S. authorities.
“I was sleeping in my house. I heard the explosion,” said Nazar Suedi, 35, a teacher. “There were pieces of bodies everywhere.”
Al-Sheikhli belongs to the Shiite Dawa Party, as did Saleem. It is a popular organization that fought for decades against Saddam Hussein. Dawa has been pro-American since the U.S. invasion last year.
In a statement carried by a Web site tied to Al Qaeda, the Monotheism and Jihad group said the latest bombing was meant to be a “strong political message” to America and its allies in Iraq.
“They will not be safe from the hand of God’s retaliation,” the group said.
Links to Iran alleged
Also Saturday, a top aide to Ahmad Chalabi, the embattled Iraqi Governing Council member once touted by the Pentagon as a possible successor to Hussein, said Iraqi and coalition authorities were seeking Chalabi’s Kurdish security chief for alleged links to Iran, The Associated Press reported.
Chalabi’s aide, Haidar Musawi, denied the allegations and accused the U.S. of a smear campaign. On Thursday, Iraqi police backed by U.S. soldiers raided Chalabi’s home and offices, confiscated documents and computers, and served an unknown number of arrest warrants.
“These allegations are ridiculous and are coming from a body that wants to fight and tarnish the reputation of a political personality that has its clear political stances,” Musawi said.