BAGHDAD — With deadly attacks against U.S. targets increasing around Baghdad, anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr raised the possibility Wednesday that he might not renew a six-month cease-fire widely credited for helping slash violence.
The cease-fire is due to expire Saturday, and there were fears, especially among minority Sunni Arabs, that the re-emergence of al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia could return Iraq to where it was just a year ago — with sectarian death squads prowling the streets of a country on the brink of civil war.
A surge of violence also would make it all the more difficult for Iraq’s Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds to reach agreements on sharing power and wealth, and greatly complicate the debate in the United States on whether and how quickly to withdraw troops.
Rear Adm. Gregory Smith, a U.S. military spokesman, blamed Iranian-backed Shiite extremists for a flurry of rocket attacks — including one Monday against an Iraqi housing complex near the country’s main U.S. military base that killed at least five people and wounded 16, including two U.S. soldiers.
Smith also said one American civilian was killed and a number of U.S. troops and civilian personnel were wounded in a rocket attack Tuesday night in the southeastern area of Rustamiyah.
He said those attacks and another Tuesday were carried out by “Iranian-backed Special Group criminals,” a term the military uses to describe groups that broke away from the Mahdi Army militia or refused to respect the cease-fire al-Sadr declared in August.
Sheik Salah al-Obeidi, a spokesman for al-Sadr in the Shiite holy city of Najaf, said that if the cleric failed to issue a statement by Saturday saying the cease-fire was extended, “then that means the freeze is over.”
Smith said that under current conditions, violence was still dropping. He said the number of civilian deaths in Baghdad had fallen from 1,087 in February 2007 to 178 in the first month of this year.
On Wednesday, a U.S. soldier was killed and three were wounded in a rocket-propelled-grenade attack in Mosul, the military said. The military has described Mosul as the last urban stronghold of al-Qaeda in Iraq.
Separately, a roadside bomb killed a soldier assigned to Multi-National Division — Center, which is responsible for territory south of Baghdad.
On Tuesday, three Iraqi children were killed and seven others wounded when they were hit by an insurgent mortar attack while playing soccer outside a military supply area near Balad, the military said.
