BAGHDAD — Radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr has decided whether to extend his Mahdi Army’s cease-fire, and sent the message in sealed envelopes to be opened at the beginning of today’s sermons, one of his officials said.
Although the content of the message, delivered Thursday to 200 loyal clerics around Iraq, was not known, there were strong indications from officials in his organization that the anti-U.S. firebrand would extend the six-month cessation of what had been an undeclared war against the U.S. military since 2004.
The cease-fire has been one of three important factors that have helped reduce violence since mid-2007. The two others are the influx of thousands of U.S. troops last summer, and emergence of Sunni-dominated groups who are fighting against al-Qaeda in Iraq.
In the latest violence, the U.S. military announced the deaths of five soldiers, and a roadside bombing wounded four British troops in the southeastern city of Basra, followed by clashes.
Police and morgue officials also said a grave with 15 bodies was found in an orchard elsewhere in the same province.
In a show of force ahead of the expiration of the cease-fire, thousands of Mahdi Army members marched through the streets of Sadr City on Thursday, unarmed but dressed in black with green kerchiefs.
The march was ostensibly to celebrate battles against U.S. military forces in 2004, when the militia fought them to a standstill in the Shiite holy city of Najaf and Sadr City.
Sheik Jamal al-Sudani, the head of the local al-Sadr media office, addressed a crowd in the thousands with nonviolent rhetoric. “We have to fight by peaceful ways,” he said. “We have to think of another way to martyrdom, this time not by attack or assassination but by a doctrinal stand.”
But some Mahdi Army men were prepared for any eventuality.
“If he lifts the freeze, then according to army standards it’s war,” said Abu Ali al-Rubaie, a local commander. He said that would mean Mahdi Army members would fight against any American attempting to arrest their members.
“Now they are going in and arresting people and they don’t fight back. If he lifts the freeze then they will fight,” al-Rubaie said.
Some of al-Sadr’s followers, frustrated by American raids against what it terms splinter groups from the Mahdi Army, have called for their leader to put his fighters back on the streets, a step that could drastically worsen sectarian violence.
The latest U.S. deaths announced Wednesday included three soldiers killed Tuesday night by a roadside bomb in northwestern Baghdad; one soldier killed and three wounded in a rocket-propelled grenade attack in the northwestern city of Mosul; and a soldier killed by a roadside bomb who was assigned to Multi-National Division — Center, which is responsible for territory south of Baghdad.
