Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr has ordered his Mehdi army to launch a broad new offensive against US-led occupying forces following a US crackdown on his strongholds in Baghdad and across the south.
The US military claimed new successes in campaigns against Sadr's forces and minority Sunni Muslim insurgents. The US military authorities disclosed yesterday that another US soldier was killed and another wounded in a roadside bomb attack north of Baghdad last Saturday.
The soldiers, from the 1st Infantry Division, were part of a patrol looking for roadside bombs in the town of Samarra, 100 km (60 miles) north of Baghdad, when the attack occurred.
Yesterday, Sadr's chief aide said in an interview in the holy city of Najaf that a new phase had begun in a month-long insurgency across Shi'ite southern Iraq. "We have now entered a second phase of resistance," he said. But US commanders, helped by rival Shi'ite leaders, sound increasingly confident of containing the Mehdi Army. Tanks flattened Sadr's office in Baghdad's Sadr City district overnight and US spokesman Brig Gen Mark Kimmitt claimed that US troops killed 35 Iraqis.
Meanwhile, a convoy of US Marines entered Falluja for the first time in more than a month yesterday, testing a shaky truce with insurgents in Iraq's most rebellious town.