US and Iraqi forces descended on the health ministry today, seizing a deputy minister accused of funnelling millions of dollars to Shia militias in the first major sign that a crackdown in Baghdad has begun.
Ministry officials and witnesses said deputy health minister Hakim Zamili, a member of radical Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's political group, was detained during the raid, the latest operation by US and Iraqi forces to target senior Sadr aides.
The US military, without naming anyone, said a senior health ministry official had been captured on suspicion of infiltrating members of Sadr's Mehdi Army militia into the ministry and using it as a cover for sectarian killings.
"The suspect's corruption is believed to have funnelled millions of US dollars into rogue JAM," it said, using the US military's acronym for the Mehdi Army.
The Pentagon has identified the Mehdi Army as a greater threat to peace in Iraq than Sunni Islamist al Qaeda.
Tit-for- tat killings by Sunni Arab and Shia militants has killed tens of thousands of Iraqis. In a massacre that bore the hallmarks of a sectarian killing, gunmen machine-gunned 14 men from the same Sunni family in a village north of Baghdad after dragging them from their homes and lining them up, police said.
South of Baghdad, a car bomb killed 17 people in a market in the mainly Shi'ite town of Aziziya and mortar rounds hit a Shia village near Iskandariya, killing seven people and wounding 10, police said.
A car bomb in Baghdad killed six. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, a Shi'ite, has vowed to tackle both Shia and Sunni Arab militants in the US-backed offensive that aims to strengthen his government's fragile grip over Baghdad, epicentre of the sectarian bloodletting. Critics say previous campaigns failed because Mr Maliki, who got the job thanks to support from Sadr's group, had resisted moving against Sadr's supporters and the Mehdi Army.
But the US military has intensified operations against the group in recent months as Washington has stepped up pressure on Mr Maliki to curb violence. The arrest came a day after the US military said the long -awaited Baghdad offensive had begun - seen as a final attempt to halt Iraq's slide toward all-out civil war.