IRAQ: SADR'S MILITIA CAPTURES & CONTROLS CITY OF AMARAH

Shia militia seizes control of entire Iraqi city

(CBC) - The Shia militia run by anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr seized total control of the southern Iraqi city of Amarah, witnesses and police said Friday, in a defiant move that could threaten the stability of the country's coalition government.

Fighters from al-Sadr's Mahdi Army stormed three main police stations Friday morning and destroyed the buildings with explosives, residents said.

Since British troops left Amarah in August, residents say the militia, which is one of the country's largest unofficial armies, has been involved in a series of killings in the city. They include slayings of merchants suspected of selling alcohol and women alleged to have engaged in behaviour deemed immoral by the militia members.

"We see here a paradigm for when U.S. and coalition forces withdraw from an area," New York Times reporter John Burns told CBC News Friday from Baghdad.

"We could see down the line a serious threat to the Iraqi government."

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki dispatched an emergency security delegation that included top officials from his cabinet and representatives from the interior and defence ministries, Yassin Majid, the prime minister's media adviser, told the Associated Press.

Killing of rival militia member sparked fighting

About 800 black-clad militiamen with Kalashnikov rifles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers were patrolling city streets Friday in commandeered police vehicles, eyewitnesses said.

Other fighters had set up roadblocks on routes into the city and sound trucks circulated telling residents to stay indoors.

Fighting broke out in Amarah on Thursday after the head of police intelligence in the surrounding province, a member of the rival Shia Badr Brigade militia, was killed by a roadside bomb, prompting his family to kidnap the teenage brother of the local head of the Madhi Army.
The Mahdi Army seized several police stations and clamped a curfew on the city in retaliation.

At least 15 people, including five militiamen, one policeman and two bystanders, have been killed in clashes since Friday, Dr. Zamil Shia, director of Amarah's department of health, said by telephone from Amarah.

The events in the city highlight the threat of wider violence between rival Shia factions, who have entrenched themselves among the majority Shia population and are blamed for killings of rival Sunnis.

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