Al-Sadr's followers denounce wall in Baghdad

BAGHDAD — Followers of anti-U.S. Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr denounced the American military's construction of a concrete wall through their Sadr City stronghold in Baghdad, the scene of renewed clashes Friday between his militiamen and U.S. and Iraqi troops.

Meanwhile, the U.S. military said a roadside bomb killed a U.S. soldier just north of Baghdad on Friday. At least 4,037 members of the U.S. military have died in the Iraq war, according to an Associated Press count.

The wall — a concrete barrier of varying height up to about 12 feet — is being built along a main street dividing the southern portion of Sadr City from the northern, where al-Sadr's Mahdi Army fighters are concentrated.

American commanders hope that construction of the Sadr City wall, which began Tuesday, will effectively cut off insurgents' ability to move freely into the rest of Baghdad and hamper their ability to fire rockets and mortars at the Green Zone, the central Baghdad district where government offices and the U.S. Embassy are located.

Such walls have gone up in many other Baghdad neighborhoods and have been effective in cutting violence as the movement of insurgents was curtailed. But they have also raised some complaints from residents over difficulties in moving in and out through checkpoints.

Sadr City has become a chief battleground between U.S. and Iraqi forces and the Mahdi Army after a trouble-plagued Iraqi crackdown on Shiite militiamen in the southern city of Basra last month.

That crackdown saw some 1,000 Iraqi soldiers refuse to fight the militiamen, and the Mahdi Army was largely able to battle troops to a standstill. The outcome raised questions whether Iraq's Shiite-majority police and army can stand up to Shiite militias despite millions of dollars spent by the U.S. to train and equip government forces.

At the same time, this week has seen a string of suicide bombings in Sunni regions that have killed 110 people, breaking a reduction in violence blamed on Sunni insurgents and al-Qaida militants.

The U.S. military on Friday issued a rare warning that it had specific intelligence of al-Qaida plans to carry out suicide bombings in Baghdad "in the near future."

An Iraqi army spokesman, Maj. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi, told government television that the most likely targets were outdoor markets and other public places.