Shiites bombed market, U.S. says

BAGHDAD — The top U.S. military spokesman in Iraq said Saturday that an Iranian-backed Shiite militia cell was responsible for a market bombing a day earlier that killed at least 15 and left at least 56 injured.

Four men captured in an overnight raid confessed to orchestrating the bombing, Rear Adm. Gregory Smith said.

Also Saturday, the Iraq Interior Ministry said it would bring charges against 31 people detained Monday after a shooting in Baghdad, for being in the country illegally.

The foreign workers were returning from work at the U.S.-run Bucca prison in the south when two Fijians shot in the air to clear traffic and wounded a woman, said the spokesman of the Ministry of Interior, Abdel Karim Khalaf.

The bombing at the al-Ghazal pet market, the deadliest in Baghdad in more than two months, occurred Friday when a bomb loaded with ball bearings and hidden in a birdcage exploded inside the market.

Market bombings typically are conducted by Sunnis, often al-Qaida in Iraq, targeting Shiites.

"The intent here was to suggest that al-Qaida had conducted this operation," Smith said. "And through that kind of intimidation suggest that the people, at least in that area, that what they really need to protect them from this kind of violence are these militia groups."

The bombing was in violation of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's six-month freeze on his vast Mahdi Army militia, Smith said.

The accusation comes as al-Sadr's followers are charging that they are victims of random detentions and human-rights violations by Iraqi security forces in the southern cities of Karbala and Diwaniyah.

Monday's shooting incident in which 45 men — 33 of them foreigners — were detained comes after a Blackwater incident that killed 17 people in mid-September.

Interior Ministry spokesman Abdel Karim Khalaf said the two Fijians accused of shooting will face criminal charges.

The 31 men — 19 from Nepal, 11 from Sri Lanka and one from India — entered the country illegally, he said.

It appeared they were returning after completing work at the Bucca prison.

Khalaf said the Dubai-based company Almco, with headquarters in Baghdad, also might face charges.

Fort Lewis brigade

bound for Diyala

BAGHDAD — U.S. military officials said Saturday that the overall number of American troops in Iraq will be reduced by some 5,000 with the withdrawal of a combat brigade from Diyala province.

But the number of soldiers in the volatile province actually will increase as a Fort Lewis-based brigade is transferred there.

The U.S. command in Baghdad announced earlier this month that the 3rd Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division had begun heading home to Fort Hood, Texas, and that its area would be taken over by another brigade already operating in Iraq.

Col. David Sutherland, commander of the 3rd Brigade, acknowledged concerns that the withdrawal of U.S. troops could lead to a reversal of a decline in violence, but said the transfer of the 4th Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division, from Fort Lewis, actually will result in more troops in the province northeast of Baghdad.

"Although our redeployment is part of the downgrade of the troops across Iraq, their presence allows more boots on the ground in the province," he said.

Spokesman Rear Adm. Gregory Smith, said the increase would be about 2,400 troops due to repositioning, but he stressed that the overall U.S. force in Iraq will be reduced by 5,000.

Earlier this year, the U.S. military announced plans to reduce troop numbers by about 20,000 by July 2008.

The current number serving in Iraq stands at around 162,000.

— The Associated Press