Baghdad, Iraq – U.S. warplanes blasted a militia team firing rocket-propelled grenades Saturday, the second day of heavy fighting in a major offensive to drive Shiite 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 Baqubah, police reported finding 21 more bodies dumped in the streets, victims of the sectarian warfare. All were shot execution-style, and many had been tortured.
At least 62 bodies have been found in or near Baqubah since Tuesday.
A total of 58 people were killed or found dead across Iraq on Saturday in the eighth week of the U.S.-Iraqi security crackdown on the capital and surrounding cities and towns.
Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, meanwhile, said that 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, Turkey – 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.
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 people were killed or kidnapped.
In violence leading up to the offensive, many women reportedly were killed after the hard-line fundamentalist militiamen accused them of violating their strict interpretation of Islamic morality.
Al-Ghanemi told The Associated Press that militants were armed with rocket- propelled grenades, Katyusha rockets, Strela anti-aircraft rockets and AK-47 assault rifles. 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.
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 Shiite political party. SCIRI, as it is known, controls the Qadisiyah provincial council.
Police were ordered off the streets Saturday, and some residents said the Iraqi military did not trust them. But Brig. Sadiq Jaafar, the city police chief, said his men were sent indoors because they were too poorly equipped to be of use in the fighting.
In Baghdad, two U.S. soldiers were killed and seven were wounded in two separate roadside-bomb attacks.
