BAGHDAD — U.S. and Iraqi forces, backed by Polish army helicopters, swept through Shiite militia strongholds south of Baghdad on Saturday, rounding up dozens of militants and killing two. The prime minister met the provincial governor, who called for reinforcements to root out “the criminals.”
Iraqi police said 30 suspected fighters linked to Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army were grabbed in a predawn house-to-house search by U.S. and Iraqi raiders in two eastern neighborhoods in Diwaniyah, 80 miles south of Baghdad.
Rival Shiite militias are engaged in grabs for power in the oil-rich south of the country, as British forces are drawing down.
But U.S. commanders have reported significant inroads against both Shiite militias and al-Qaeda in Iraq fighters across the fertile agriculture belt nearer to the capital.
They credit local residents, emboldened against the terror tactics of both al-Qaeda and Shiite militants, with much of the success. The residents have bought into a trend that started in Iraq’s western Anbar province, where Sunni tribesmen rose up against al-Qaeda and have methodically hunted them down in conjunction with U.S. forces.
South of the capital, Shiite militiamen are facing the same onslaught in communities where they have terrorized co-religionists.
On Diwaniyah’s east side, U.S.-led ground forces backed by two Polish army helicopters came under fire from machine guns and an anti-tank grenade launcher, the military said.
Also Saturday, the U.S. military said a soldier was killed and eight others wounded in a roadside bombing in eastern Baghdad on Thursday. That death brings to at least 3,833 members of the U.S. military who have died since the beginning of the Iraq war, according to an Associated Press count.
