The radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr on Monday blasted US President George W. Bush for signing a deal with Baghdad agreeing to a longer-term US military presence in Iraq.
"I say this to the evil Bush -- leave my country," Sadr said in a statement issued by his office in the Shiite holy city of Najaf.
"We do not need you and your army of darkness," he said. "We don't need your planes and tanks. We don't need your policy and your interference. We don't want your democracy and fake freedom. Get out of our land."
PHOTO: AFP
Sadr's salvo comes a week after the US president and Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki announced a deal ensuring a long-term presence of US forces in the country.
Bush and Maliki decided to end the UN mandate for foreign troops' presence in Iraq next year and replace it with a bilateral pact between the two countries for a US military presence beyond next year.
The leader of Iraq's biggest Shiite party on Monday said he hoped an expected security agreement with the US would ultimately leave the country free of foreign troops.
Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, who leads the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, described the proposed agreement as part of a larger effort to return Iraq to "complete sovereignty."
"For me, personally, I'm looking forward to seeing Iraq as not having any presence of foreign troops just like all the free people around the world," he said through an interpreter at a forum in Washington hosted by the United States Institute of Peace.
"I don't think that any [free people] will have the desire to see foreign troops on their soil," said Hakim, whose political party is a cornerstone of the Shiite alliance behind Maliki.
There are 166,000 US troops in Iraq, including extra forces sent this year to quell sectarian violence in and around Baghdad as part of Bush's so-called surge strategy.
Meanwhile, troops unearthed a mass grave with the remains of 12 people including a paramedic who disappeared more than a year ago, Iraqi officials said, the latest grisly discovery in a former stronghold of al-Qaeda in Iraq.
Morgue workers wearing masks to protect them from the stench of decomposing bodies dug through bags of bones and tattered clothes on Monday as they sought clues to the identities of those killed.
More than 100 bodies, including women and children, have turned up since October in the remote desert terrain surrounding Lake Tharthar, a man-made body of water straddling the predominantly Sunni provinces of Anbar and Salahuddin about 100km northwest of Baghdad.
Most of the victims had no identity documents, but officials have said they were likely abducted and murdered by al-Qaeda in Iraq and other insurgents.
The US military has claimed significant progress since last summer in forcing al-Qaeda in Iraq out of Anbar Province with the help of Sunni tribal leaders and local officials. Iraqis forces have taken advantage of these recent security gains to step up patrols in areas previously considered no-go zones.
But Lake Tharthar, which used to be a resort popular with officials under Saddam Hussein's Sunni-dominated regime, has remained one of the hardest areas to control. The newly discovered mass grave was located between the lake and the Anbar city of Fallujah.
Two of the bodies found on Sunday were beheaded, according to an official at Fallujah General Hospital, where the remains were taken. Hospital officials said some appeared to have been killed as recently as four months ago, while others dated to 18 months ago.
A Health Ministry card that belonged to the missing paramedic provided a rare solid identity clue.
Two other mass graves were found near the lake last month -- one containing 40 bodies and another with 29. Twenty-five other bodies, some decapitated, were found in October, and authorities said the victims apparently died within the previous three months.
Authorities have also found mass graves in other parts of the country where violence has decreased. Seventeen corpses were unearthed last month at a site near Baqubah.
The areas where the bodies were found are both former al-Qaeda strongholds, suggesting the terror network was behind the killings.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
RSS