Iraqi PM no longer protects cleric's militia

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Iraq's prime minister Nouri al-Maliki has dropped his protection of an anti-American cleric's Shiite militia after U.S. intelligence convinced him the group was infiltrated by death squads, two Iraqi officials said Sunday.

In a desperate bid Friday to fend off an all-out U.S. offensive, radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr ordered the 30 legislators and six Cabinet ministers under his control to end their nearly two-month boycott of the Iraqi government. They were back at their jobs Sunday.

Al-Sadr already had ordered his militia fighters not to display their weapons. They have not, however, ceded control of the formerly mixed neighborhoods they have captured, killing Sunnis or forcing them to abandon their homes and businesses.

Meanwhile, chilling details emerged Sunday of gunmen posing as American and Iraqi soldiers in an ambush on U.S. troops in Karbala a day earlier that killed five Americans and wounded three.

On Saturday, a civil-affairs team of U.S. soldiers sat with local leaders in Karbala's provincial headquarters. Outside, danger was approaching. A convoy of seven white GMC Suburbans sped toward the building, breezing through checkpoints, with the men wearing U.S. and Iraqi military uniforms and flashing American ID cards, Iraqi officials said.

The force stopped at the police directorate in Karbala and took weapons but gave no reason, said police spokesman Capt. Muthana Ahmed in Babel province.

A call was made to the provincial headquarters to inform them an American convoy was on its way, said the governor of Karbala, Akeel al-Khazaali.

But the Americans stationed inside the building, which acts as a coordination center for Iraqi officials, Iraqi security forces and U.S. forces, had not been informed, Iraqi officials said.

As the U.S. soldiers and the Iraqis scrambled to figure out if the men were Americans or an illegally armed group, the convoy arrived and the gunmen tried to break in.

The gunmen launched grenades, mortars and small-arms fire, according to a U.S. military statement. The U.S. said Sunday it was still not clear if the gunmen were Sunni or Shiite militia.

Abu Abdullah, a commander in Karbala of al-Sadr's Mahdi Army, on Sunday denied involvement in the attack.

After 15 minutes of fighting, the gunmen fled toward Hilla, the capital of Babel, a mixed Sunni-Shiite province, Ahmed said.

Police commandos in Babel discovered the vehicles and found three dead men inside, a wounded man and five others, Ahmed said. He said they all spoke English.

Iraqi police took the men back to the police station, and American forces retrieved them by dawn.

Also inside the vehicles, Iraqi police found a bag filled with American military uniforms. They also found flak vests, American weapons and American ID cards that had allowed the gunmen to maneuver through the city, Ahmed said.

The U.S. military did not reveal details Sunday but acknowledged the gunmen posed as American and Iraqi soldiers using U.S. and Iraqi military uniforms, GMC Suburbans and U.S. and Iraqi identification.

Saturday's U.S. death toll climbed significantly to 25 after the military reported Sunday that six more troops had died in the deadliest day in two years for American forces.

The latest military reports said four soldiers and a Marine had died during combat Saturday in Anbar province and one soldier was killed in a roadside bombing near Baghdad.

The military said today that two U.S. Marines were killed in separate attacks in Anbar province.

The Marines, assigned to the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit, died Sunday of wounds from enemy action in the insurgent stronghold west of Baghdad, the military said in a statement.

Al-Maliki's turnaround on the Mahdi Army was puzzling. As late as Oct. 31, he had intervened to end a U.S. blockade of Sadr City, the northeast Shiite enclave in Baghdad that is headquarters to the militia.

The enclave is held responsible for much of the sectarian bloodshed in the capital over the past year.

Shiite militias began taking revenge after more than two years of incessant bomb and shooting attacks by Sunni insurgents.

Sometime between Oct. 31 and Nov. 30, when the prime minister met with President Bush, al-Maliki was convinced of the truth of U.S. intelligence reports that contended, among other things, his protection of al-Sadr's militia was isolating him in the Arab world and among moderates at home, the two government officials said.

"Al-Maliki realized he couldn't keep defending the Mahdi Army because of the information and evidence that the armed group was taking part in the killings, displacing people and violating the state's sovereignty," said one official.

Both he and a second government official who confirmed the account refused to be identified by name because the information was confidential.

"The Americans don't act on rumors but on accurate intelligence. There are many intelligence agencies acting on the ground, and they know what's going on," said the second official, confirming the Americans had given al-Maliki overwhelming evidence about the Mahdi Army's deep involvement in sectarian slaughter.

Bush and al-Maliki separately announced this month a new security drive to clamp off the sectarian violence.

Bush announced an additional 21,500 American soldiers would be sent to accomplish the task; al-Maliki has promised a similar number of forces, who will take the lead in the overall operation.

Iraq's Special Forces Command division has teamed with the Americans since late last year for a series of pinpoint attacks in which at least five top Mahdi Army figures have been killed or captured.

The neighborhood-by-neighborhood sweep, expected to begin in earnest by February, will target Sunni insurgents, al-Qaida in Iraq and its allied militant bands equally with Shiite militias, both the Mahdi Army and the Badr Brigade.

The latter is the Iranian-trained military wing of Iraq's most power Shiite political group, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq.

The first government official said al-Maliki's message was blunt.

"He told the sheik that the activities of both the Sadrist politicians and the militia have inflamed hatred among neighboring Sunni Arab states that have been complaining bitterly to the Americans," the official said.

Sunni Muslims are the majority sect in key Arab countries like Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt, all of which have shunned al-Maliki.

Compiled from The Associated Press and McClatchy Newspapers reports.