Baghdad, Iraq – The British army in Basra said Sunday it has arrested two prominent members of a militia affiliated with outspoken Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
Al-Sadr’s armed followers quickly took to the streets of the southern city to demand their release.
Sheik Ahmed Majid Farttusi and Sayyid Sajjad were detained in a raid early Sunday morning and are accused of being involved in attacks that killed at least nine soldiers, according to a statement from coalition forces. The statement described the two as leaders of al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army, which clashed with U.S. forces in Baghdad and the southern city of Najaf last year. Another man was arrested in the raid but was not named.
Also Sunday, Iraqi officials announced that National Assembly member Faris Nasir Hussein, a Kurd, was killed by gunmen late Saturday, along with his brother and his driver. He is the third member of Iraq’s parliament to be assassinated since members took office this year. Another assembly member, Haider Qasim, was wounded.
The men were traveling to a meeting in Baghdad in which the assembly gave final approval to the country’s draft constitution and submitted it to the United Nations, which plans to print about 5 million copies in advance of a nationwide referendum to be held by Oct. 15.
After the arrests in Basra, dozens of Mahdi Army members wielding AK-47s marched in protest to the provincial governor’s office. They withdrew by early afternoon, following a meeting with the governor.
After demonstrators burned al-Sadr’s office in Najaf last month, Mahdi Army members occupied large parts of several southern cities, including Basra, and launched attacks against the offices of a rival Shiite militia, the Badr organization.
A young, brash cleric and the son of an assassinated ayatollah who was among the country’s most revered religious leaders, al-Sadr and his followers have been vocal opponents of the U.S. presence in Iraq since the end of the 2003 invasion.
Elsewhere in Iraq on Sunday, in the northwestern city of Tall Afar, where U.S. and Iraqi forces continued to wrap up an offensive that began early this month, six insurgents were killed by U.S. soldiers raiding a pair of “safe houses,” the military said in a statement.
A U.S. soldier died Saturday in a roadside bomb attack near the western town of Al Asad, the military said in a statement, and four Iraqi soldiers were killed in a roadside bombing in the northern city of Kirkuk, according to Col. Ayad Abdullah of the army’s second brigade.
