BAGHDAD — Iraq’s leaders faced their gravest challenge in months Tuesday as Shiite militiamen loyal to anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr battled government forces for control of the southern oil capital of Basra, fought U.S. and Iraqi troops in Baghdad and unleashed rockets on the Green Zone.
Armed Mahdi Army militiamen appeared on some Baghdad streets for the first time in more than six months as al-Sadr’s followers announced a nationwide campaign of strikes and demonstrations to protest a government crackdown on their movement. Merchants shuttered their shops in commercial districts in several Baghdad neighborhoods.
U.S. and Iraqi troops backed by helicopters fought Shiite militiamen in Baghdad’s Sadr City district after the local office of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s Dawa Party came under attack, the U.S. said.
Residents reported intermittent explosions and gunfire in the area late Tuesday.
An American soldier was killed in fighting Tuesday afternoon in Baghdad, the U.S. military said. No further details were released, and it was unclear whether Shiite militiamen were responsible.
Although all sides appeared reluctant to trigger a conflagration, Brig. Gen. Ed Cardon, assistant commander of the U.S. task force operating south of Baghdad, said the situation in the south was “very complicated” and “the potential for miscalculation is high.”
The burgeoning crisis — part of an intense power struggle among Shiite political factions — has major implications for the United States. An escalation could unravel the cease- fire that al-Sadr proclaimed in August. A resumption of fighting by his militia could kill more U.S. soldiers and threaten — at least in the short run — the security gains Washington has hailed as a sign that Iraq is on the road to recovery.
The confrontation also will test the skill and resolve of Iraq’s Shiite-led government in dealing with Shiite militias, with whom the national leadership had maintained close ties.
In Baghdad, several salvos of rockets were fired at the Green Zone, which houses the U.S. and British embassies. There were no reports of casualties, but the blasts sent people scurrying for concrete bunkers.
Lawmakers from al-Sadr’s movement announced that a civil disobedience campaign that began Monday in selected neighborhoods of the capital was being extended nationwide. The campaign was seen as an indication that the Sadrists want to assert their power without provoking a major showdown with the Americans, who inflicted massive casualties on the Mahdi Army during fighting in 2004.
Iraq’s national security adviser, Mouwaffak al-Rubaie, was in contact with the Sadrist leadership in hopes of easing the crisis, a Sadrist official said.
