Mahdi Army attacking its own?

BAGHDAD -- Men wearing Iraqi military uniforms tried to gun down one of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's top aides Sunday.

Al-Sadr supporters said his top aide, Hazem al-Araji, was in a convoy in the northwest Baghdad neighborhood of Kadhimiyah when gunmen in Iraqi National Guard uniforms opened fire on him, injuring five of his bodyguards.

Al-Sadr leads the Mahdi Army, which has infiltrated Iraqi security forces and is often accused of posing in Iraqi military uniforms to carry out its attacks. It is unclear whether the would-be assassins were actual Iraqi soldiers or possibly other backers of al-Sadr, whose movement has become splintered in recent months.

Recently, al-Araji was reported to have lost clout in the Sadr movement and some of his control over the Mahdi Army in Kadhimiyah.

Qahtan al-Sudani, a spokesman for al-Araji who leads the al-Sadr office in Kadhimiyah, blamed the attack on Sunnis.

"We accuse the Baathist takfiris," al-Sudani said referring to both Saddam Hussein's secular party and Sunni extremists.

Rogue Shiite militiamen with Iranian weapons and training launched three-quarters of the attacks that killed or wounded American forces last month in Baghdad, stepping into the void left as Sunni insurgents have been dislodged, a top U.S commander said Sunday.

Attacks against U.S. forces were down sharply last month nationwide, and military officials have expressed cautious optimism that a security crackdown is working. At the same time, the number of attacks launched by breakaway factions of the Mahdi Army militia has increased, said Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno, the U.S. second-in-command.

He did not provide a total number of militia attacks. But he said 73 percent of the attacks that wounded or killed U.S. troops last month in Baghdad were launched by Shiite militiamen, nearly double the figure six months earlier.

Tehran has denied U.S. allegations that it is fueling the violence in Iraq.

Al-Sadr agreed to pull his Mahdi Army fighters off the streets as the U.S.-Iraqi security crackdown began on Feb. 12 in Baghdad and surrounding regions.

But disaffected members of the Mahdi Army broke away from al-Sadr control. Dissident members of the militia told The Associated Press that they went to Iran for training and armaments and returned to Iraq to join the fight against U.S. and Iraqi troops.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki refused Sunday to accept the resignations of six Cabinet members, keeping open the door for a possible return of Sunni ministers whose departure last week caused a crisis in his unity government.

Members of the Sunni bloc known as the Iraqi Accordance Front, or Tawafiq in Arabic, said al-Maliki's action would not affect their decision. But a senior member held out the possibility that a resolution could be reached at an upcoming summit of leaders of Iraq's main ethnic and religious blocs.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he believed the troop buildup completed in June was beginning to improve security but blamed Iraqi politicians for failing to pass legislation aimed at reconciliation.

He expressed disappointment at the Sunni withdrawal from the Cabinet, as well as parliament's decision to take the month of August off. He told NBC's "Meet the Press" that he had urged the country's presidency council, which consists of its president and two vice presidents, not to follow parliament's example.

His message, he said, was blunt: "For every day that we buy you, we're buying it with American blood, and the idea of you going on vacation is unacceptable."

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice struck a more conciliatory note, telling "Fox News Sunday" that "the leadership is not on recess, and the presidency council and the prime minister are still working." But she said the Bush administration had told the Iraqis they need to work harder.

U.S. officials, under pressure to show progress in a report to be delivered in Congress on Sept. 15, had hoped that giving Iraq's Sunni Arab minority a stake in the government would foster reconciliation with the majority Shiite Muslims.

The U.S. military announced the deaths of four U.S. soldiers: two during fighting Sunday in Baghdad and two others in separate attacks Saturday in western Baghdad and another area near the capital.

In other violence, a suicide bomber slammed a dump truck filled with explosives into a densely populated residential area in the northern Iraqi city of Tal Afar today, killing at least 25 people, police said.

The attack occurred in a crowded Shiite neighborhood of the mixed city, which lies about 260 miles northwest of Baghdad.

Compiled from McClatchy Newspapers, Los Angeles Times

and The Associated Press