Troops and militiamen clash in Baghdad

Iraqi forces clashed with anti-Qaeda militants in Baghdad for a second straight day on Sunday, as US troops backing them ordered residents to hand over weapons or face reprisals.

Automatic weapons fire crackled intermittently in the central Baghdad neighbourhood of Fadel, where fighting first broke out on Saturday after Iraqi special forces arrested militia leader Adel Mashhadani.

Mashhadani is the local chief of the Sahwa or Awakening militia comprising mostly-Sunni former insurgents trained and financed by US and Iraqi forces to fight Al-Qaeda militants.

Baghdad military command spokesman Major General Qasim Atta said that Mashhadani was arrested along with Sahwa member Salman Kadduri over allegations of murder and extortion.

"There are 80 civil suits against him for murder and extortion," he said.

According to Atta, when Iraqi special forces went to arrest the pair on Saturday they "came under fire," sparking the lethal clashes.

Two Iraqi civilians were killed in Saturday's fighting and 15 other people were wounded, including four soldiers and seven Sahwa members, the interior ministry said.

The Iraqi army has blocked access to Fadel since the fighting began while military intelligence police holding name lists checked the identities of all those going into and out of the neighbourhood, an AFP correspondent said.

The fighting is the worst to erupt in central Baghdad since US and Iraqi forces, backed by Sahwa fighters, waged war in 2007 against Al-Qaeda militants and their supporters who had taken over the area.

Atta insisted that Iraqi forces "are not hunting down the Sahwas but carrying out a search operation for suspects wanted by the judicial authorities and gangsters who are firing on our forces."

Iraqi forces, backed by US troops, tried on Sunday to restore calm in the Sunni Muslim neighbourhood, a former Al-Qaeda bastion, but were confronted by snipers hiding in buildings.

As US helicopters carried out reconnaissance flights over the area, American troops in armoured vehicles criss-crossed the neighbourhood blaring messages in Arabic from loudspeakers ordering residents to hand over weapons by a noon 0900 GMT deadline or face reprisals.

"Anyone who still holds weapons after this deadline will be considered a terrorist," the message said.

US army Lieutenant-Colonel David Buckingham said that nearly half of some 100 Sahwa members "freely gave back their weapons" before the expiry of the deadline.

Buckingham said the US-backed operation was led by Iraqi forces and was expected to be over later in the day.

Some Sahwa militiamen expressed bitterness at having to give up their arms.

"The Sahwas have been liquidated and Al-Qaeda will return and the attacks will return with them," one fighter, who gave his name only as Qussay, told AFP after handing in a Kalashnikov rifle.

Violence also flared on Sunday in the southern oil hub of Basra, where six people were killed and seven other wounded when a bomb targeting Iraqi oil installation guards exploded, police said.





Kasahara