Radical anti-US cleric Moqtada al-Sadr has fled Iraq for Iran, a US defense official said yesterday, a claim vehemently denied by the Shiite leader's supporters.
"We have seen the reports and believe them to be accurate," the official told reporters in Baghdad, referring to reports in the US media that the firebrand preacher had driven to Tehran ahead of a ramped-up security plan.
The Pentagon describes Sadr's Mahdi Army militia as the most dangerous faction in the vicious sectarian war gripping Iraq, accusing rogue elements of the force of killing hundreds of Sunni civilians.
The defence official spoke on condition of anonymity, as has become typical when US military sources make allegations against local and Iranian leaders.
Media reports quoted US intelligence officials as saying Sadr had left Iraq two to three weeks ago to avoid being killed or captured by US troops carrying out a new operation to put and end to sectarian violence.
But Nassar al-Rubaie, the head of Sadr's parliamentary bloc, insisted he was "still inside Iraq and working normally" but would not say exactly where.
And Bassem al-Aathari, an official at Sadr's office in Najaf south of Baghdad, said the cleric was still in the Shiite holy city and that if he was to travel abroad this would be announced as had been the case for previous trips.
"It's ridiculous. It's nothing," Rubaie told reporters in Baghdad.
"If the US army already in Iraq is incapable of resisting Sadr, what difference would 20,000 reinforcements make?" he demanded.
The US is in the process of sending five extra combat brigades to support a joint US-Iraqi operation to pacify Baghdad, which is in the grip of a bloody war between Shiite and Sunni factions.
But Rubaie repeated the Sadr movement's insistence that it supports the security plan and that it fighters would disarm once it is successful.
"The arms that people got to defend themselves will disappear as soon as the state assures security. We support this plan," he said.
In recent weeks anonymous US military briefers have been pushing claims that Tehran is directly involved in supplying weaponry to Shiite factions in Iraq, including armour-piercing bombs that have killed 170 US soldiers.
Iran has rebutted the claims.
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