The movement of anti-US Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr said yesterday it had struck a deal with Iraqi officials to end weeks of fighting in Baghdad that left another 13 people dead overnight.
Sheikh Salah al-Obeidi, the spokesman for the cleric’s office in the central shrine city of Najaf, said the deal reached with a government delegation would be effective starting today.
“We will stop the fire, stop displaying arms in public and open all the roads leading to Sadr City,” Obeidi said. “This agreement will be executed from tomorrow. The Sadr movement has agreed to the contents of the deal and it has now become an official document.
Obeidi, who took part in the negotiations leading to the clinching of the deal in Baghdad, said the two sides had reached agreement on most issues.
“The two groups agreed on 10 of the 14 points discussed. The agreed points do not include disbanding of Jaish al-Mahdi,” he said, referring to Sadr’s feared Mehdi Army militia.
The US military launched air strikes against suspected militia targets in the vast slum district of some 2 million people throughout the night, witnesses and Iraqi medics and security officials said.
“Every 10 minutes or so we heard explosions,” Sadr City resident Hussein Kadhim, 35, said. “Last night must have been one of the worst nights of fighting in the past month.”
A medical source at the al-Sadr hospital said 77 people were also wounded in the fighting. All of the dead were men, but the wounded included women and children.
The US military said only one militant had been killed when it launched an air strike against a man trying to fire a rocket.
“Other than that, there were multiple harassment fire events, both small arms and rocket-propelled grenades predominantly, throughout the night,” a US military statement said, playing down the violence. “Nothing serious, no injuries or damage.”
Since March 25, US and Iraqi forces have been battling militants in Sadr City, mostly from the Mehdi Army. Hundreds of people have died.
An aide to Sadr used his sermon at the main weekly prayers in Sadr City on Friday to criticize Shiite spiritual leader Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani for not speaking out against the death toll from the clashes.
“We are surprised by the silence in Najaf,” where the Shiite religious hierarchy is based, Sheikh Sattar Battat said.
“For 50 days, Sadr City has been bombed ... Children, women and old people have been killed by all kinds of US weapons, and Najaf remains silent,” Battat said.
Battat complained that there had been no religious decree from the Shiite hierarchy criticizing the assault by US and Iraqi government troops on Shiite fighters.
“For us this means that Najaf accepts the massacre in Sadr City,” he said.
There was no immediate reaction to the criticism from Sistani’s office.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
‘DELUSIONAL’: Targeting the families of Hamas’ leaders would not push the group to change its position or to give up its demands for Palestinians, Ismail Haniyeh said Israeli aircraft on Wednesday killed three sons of Hamas’ top political leader in the Gaza Strip, striking high-stakes targets at a time when Israel is holding delicate ceasefire negotiations with the militant group. Hamas said four of the leader’s grandchildren were also killed. Ismail Haniyeh’s sons are among the highest-profile figures to be killed in the war so far. Israel said they were Hamas operatives, and Haniyeh accused Israel of acting in “the spirit of revenge and murder.” The deaths threatened to strain the internationally mediated ceasefire talks, which appeared to gain steam in recent days even as the sides remain far
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of