Commentary
Baghdad Observer - McClatchy Newspapers
Potshots, Rockets and Tents
Posted by Leila Fadel
Tue May 13, 1:22 PM ET
A cease-fire is in place to end the about six-week long battle in Sadr City — a cease-fire that doesn't seem to be sticking. In the vast Shiite slum in northeast Baghdad the U.S. military and the Iraqi Security Forces are entrenched in an urban war with the Mahdi Army.
On Sunday the fighting was supposed to stop. But today the Iraqi Security Forces raided a Sadr office in the northwest of Baghdad, the Mahdi Army attacked a checkpoint in a nearby neighborhood and the U.S. military got caught in a gun battle. A U.S. air strike killed five and injured four people, hospitals in Sadr City reported. The military confirmed that one U.S. air strike was conducted. Fifteen other people were wounded and a child was run over by an Iraqi Humvee, the hospitals said. A U.S. soldier was killed in a roadside bomb blast in northwest Baghdad.
The militia doesn't seem to be standing down even with Muqtada al Sadr's approval of the agreement that would bring an end to the fighting.
“I’m still a little bit cautious they are out of control and nobody will control them,” Tahseen al Sheikhly, the civil spokesman for the Baghdad Operation Command said. “They are threatening the people and even threatening the Mahdi Army themselves…We have to wait and see for four days what will happen”
Sadrists are in danger of losing their base as families continue to flee. More than 8,500 families have been displaced from the more than 2 million people in Sadr City. More than 400 families are sleeping in tents in a football stadium in Baghdad, afraid to return home despite the agreement. But tents are not a true count because most people flee to cousins, brothers and tribesmen who open their homes to their families. The death toll inside the Sadr stronghold is about 1,000 people and more than 2,000 have been wounded in the district of 2.5 million.
The U.S. military continues to build a wall to isolate the southern edge of Sadr City where they have Joint Security Stations and their soldiers are holed up in abandon homes. Every time they continue to build the wall militants shoot at them and gun battles ensued.
It doesn't seem to be over just yet.
