BAGHDAD — Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki described his crackdown on Shiite militias in southern Iraq as a success Tuesday, even as Britain said the situation has turned too volatile to pull more of its troops from the region as planned.
Representatives of Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who on Sunday ordered his Mahdi Army militia to stop fighting, accused Iraqi forces of violating the cease-fire with new raids Tuesday in Basra and Hillah and warned that such behavior could ignite further bloodshed.
Iraqi security forces denied the allegations, the latest indication of the ongoing animosity between al-Sadr and the Iraqi government and the tenuous state of the truce.
Basra and Baghdad remained relatively quiet Tuesday, with only sporadic skirmishes reported. Among them were a U.S. air assault on the anti-American cleric’s Baghdad stronghold, Sadr City, which the U.S. military said killed six militia fighters. An American military spokesman, Lt. Col. Steven Stover, denied allegations by some residents that civilians were among those killed.
The situation in Basra, 250 miles to the south, remained tense.
Residents said that militia members remained on the streets in some neighborhoods and that Iraqi security forces deployed in the city were jumpy and quick to blast bullets into the air when vehicles came near.
“The streets are less busy today than yesterday, because people fear that the security situation may blow up again,” said Yahya Ali, who lives in the Ashar neighborhood. “There are rumors that the government and Mahdi Army are exchanging threats.”
There was no immediate word from U.S. or British military officials on whether their forces had been active in Basra on Tuesday.
Both countries provided air and ground support to Iraqi security forces after violence erupted March 24, when al-Maliki launched an offensive in the city. Subsequent violence left more than 600 people dead, mostly in Basra and Baghdad, Iraqi officials have said.
Al-Maliki said the offensive was aimed at criminal elements, not al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army, which is a rival to the militia of the government-backed Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council,
Britain’s defense secretary, Des Browne, told the House of Commons on Tuesday that things were too unstable to proceed with plans to slash British troop levels in Basra to 2,500 by June, as planned. About 4,000 troops remain on a base on Basra’s outskirts, and that number will stay constant, he said.
On Tuesday, al-Maliki said the “success of the rule-of-law plan” in Basra would allow him to launch several reconstruction projects to help the city.
These, he said, include deployment of government officials to accelerate resumption of services such as water and electricity.
In an apparent effort to curry favor with Baghdad’s 2.5 million-resident Sadr City district, al-Maliki deployed his special envoy for essential services, Ahmad Chalabi, to tour the vast slum.
Municipal leaders and al-Sadr officials said Chalabi spent about three hours in Sadr City and discussed ways of improving services and medical care, and removing trash and rubble from the streets.
