Top Mookie Aide Whacked

What's this ceasefire business they speak of? The only shame of this is it wasn't Al-Sadr himself.

Iraqi police imposed a curfew to prevent an outbreak of violence in the southern Shi'ite holy city of Najaf on Friday, after a senior aide to anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr was shot dead.

A missile ripped a hole in the second floor of the Palestine Hotel in central Baghdad, killing three civilians outside the hotel, police said.

The hotel, sited across the Tigris River from the Green Zone diplomatic and government compound, houses some international media but is largely vacant. The Associated Press, which has TV staff in the hotel, said none of its people were hurt.

Overnight, U.S. aircraft killed 12 people in strongholds of Sadr's masked Mehdi Army militia.

In Najaf, police set up road blocks and drove through the city with loudspeakers ordering shops closed and people off the streets, a Reuters reporter said, after Riyadh al-Nuri, a top Sadr aide whose sister is married to the cleric's brother, was gunned down.

"We have lost a beloved friend and brother to our hearts. The occupation had its hand in this crime in some way," aide Abdul-Hadi al-Mohammedawi quoted Sadr as saying in a speech at the cemetery where Nuri was buried. "His eminence (Sadr) calls for calm and not to drift into strife."

U.S. and Iraqi forces have clashed repeatedly with Sadr's Mehdi Army since March, when Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki launched a crackdown on the militia in the southern city of Basra.

Basra has been relatively quiet since Sadr called his fighters off the streets of Iraq's second largest city nearly two weeks ago.

In the early morning hours of Friday, however, Iraqi troops were fired upon when they tried to enter the northern Basra district of Hayaniya, a Mehdi Army stronghold, police said.

We'd have saved a lot of headaches had Al-Sadr went bye-bye years ago. Now, however, he and his goons are still defiant.

But in a Mehdi Army statement read over loudspeakers in Sadr City mosques on Thursday night, the militia was defiant.

"They want us to disarm, but they are seeking to take away the dignity and honour of the Iraqi people," it said, according to a Reuters reporter who heard the statement.

"They want to turn Iraq into another Palestine, but we say to the tyrants that we will not abandon our weapons. Allahu Akbar (God is Greatest)."

Mookie Wants To Be An Ayatollah

As reported by his close friends at the Associated Press.

Frankly, I'd prefer he were six feet under.

Iraq's Maverick Cleric Hits the Books

The leader of Iraq's biggest Shiite militia movement has quietly resumed seminary studies toward attaining the title of ayatollah - a goal that could make firebrand cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army an even more formidable power broker in Iraq.

Al-Sadr's objectives - described to The Associated Press by close aides - are part of increasingly bitter Shiite-on-Shiite battles for control of Iraq's southern oil fields, the lucrative pilgrim trade to Shiite holy cities and the nation's strategic Persian Gulf outlet.

The endgame among Iraq's majority Shiites also means long-term influence over Iraqi political and financial affairs as the Pentagon and its allies look to scale down their military presence in the coming year.

Al-Sadr's backers remain main players in the showdowns across the region, where fears of even more bloodshed are rising following Wednesday's triple car bombing in one of the area's main urban hubs. At least 25 people were killed and scores wounded.

But al-Sadr - who was last seen publicly in May - is also confronting the most serious challenges to his influence, which includes sway over a bloc in parliament and a militia force that numbers as many as 60,000 by some estimates.

Becoming an ayatollah - one of the highest Shiite clerical positions - would give the 33-year-old al-Sadr an important new voice and aura.

Read the rest.

Mass Grave Uncovered in Anbar

No doubt the left will dismiss this as a result of our "occupation" of Iraq, after conveniently overlooking Saddam Hussein's mass graves over the years.

US finds 35 bodies in mass grave in Iraq's Anbar

The U.S. military said on Saturday it had uncovered 35 to 40 bodies in a mass grave south of Falluja, in Iraq's Sunni dominated Anbar province.

A Falluja hospital source said 35 bodies had been retrieved and were being finger-printed to establish their identity.

The military said the killings were relatively recent and the bodies had been bound and bore gunshot wounds.

The mass grave was found late on Friday near a place called Ferris, roughly 35 km (22 miles) south of the city of Falluja, after a tip-off from a local, it said.

Meanwhile, a fierce shootout in Sadr City reduced the terrorist supply by over two dozen, though since we're creating more terrorists, surely there will be more where they came from.

U.S. troops killed about 26 suspected militants in Baghdad's Sadr City on Saturday in one of the fiercest clashes in the Shi'ite stronghold since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

Residents of the east Baghdad slum district, a bastion of fiery Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and his Mehdi Army militia, said the fighting lasted six hours and involved helicopter-fired missile strikes.

The U.S. military said American forces staged two separate raids into Sadr City targeting militants suspected of close ties to "Iranian terror networks" and who were responsible for bringing Iranian weapons into Iraq.

"Coalition Forces killed an estimated 26 terrorists and detained 17 suspected secret cell terrorists during the two operations," a U.S. military statement said. There were no civilian casualties, the U.S. military said separately.

.

UPDATE: More from Bill Roggio.

U.S. Raids Mookie Stronghold

Now that the hairy freak has returned from hiding out in Iran, it's high time to put him on ice. It's only about fours years in coming.

This is a start.

BAGHDAD (AP) - A day after radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr resurfaced to end nearly four months in hiding and demand U.S. troops leave Iraq, American forces raided his Sadr City stronghold and killed five suspected militia fighters in air strikes Saturday.

U.S. and Iraqi forces called in the air strikes after a raid in which they captured a "suspected terrorist cell leader," the U.S. military said in statement.

The statement claimed the captured man was "the suspected leader in a secret cell terrorist network known for facilitating the transport of weapons and explosively formed penetrators, or EFPs, from Iran to Iraq, as well as bringing militants from Iraq to Iran for terrorist training."

EFP's are deadly roadside bombs that hurl a fist-size slug of molten copper that penetrates armor, a weapon that has been highly effective against American forces over the past year.

The militia fighters were killed in air strikes on nine cars that were seen positioning themselves to attack American forces after the raid, the military said.

Mookie Rears His Ugly Head

According to al-Reuters, this freak is powerful. If that's the case, why has he been in hiding so long, likely in Iran?

KUFA, Iraq (Reuters) - Powerful anti-American Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr appeared in public for the first time in months on Friday and again demanded that U.S. troops get out of Iraq.

Sadr, who has not been seen since the start of a major U.S.-backed security crackdown in Iraq in February, also sought to stamp his authority on his fractured Mehdi Army militia, calling on them to stop fighting Iraqi forces. The militia has been blamed for much of the violence, particularly in Baghdad.

In a sermon at Friday prayers in the southern city of Kufa, his home base, Sadr also called Israel, Britain and the United States the "evil trio". Dressed in traditional black robes and turban, he entered the mosque surrounded by guards and aides.

The U.S. military says Sadr fled to Iran in January ahead of the launch of the Baghdad security plan, but aides to the young cleric insist he never left Iraq.

Residents of Kufa said they had noticed more Mehdi Army militiamen on the streets in the past week, possibly indicating Sadr had been away and had returned. The U.S. military, which has been tracking his movements, said it had noted his return.

It's way past time this joker got whacked.

UPDATE: Most excellent news. It's not Mookie, but one of his top guys was killed by the Brits in Basra

BAGHDAD -- The leader of the Shiite Mahdi Army militia in the southern Iraqi city of Basra was killed Friday in a gunbattle with British soldiers, Iraqi police said.

Wissam al-Waili, 23, also known as Abu Qadir, was shot and killed along with his brother and two aides during the battle Friday afternoon, police said.

The Mahdi Army of radical Shiite Muqtada al-Sadr is fiercely opposed to the presence of U.S. and British troops in Iraq. However, the militia has lowered its profile since U.S.-led forces began a security crackdown in Baghdad in February.

The gunbattle Friday began about 4 p.m. when British forces attempted to arrest al-Waili after he left a mosque in Jumhoriyah a middle class, residential area in central Basra, police said. Al-Waili and his three companions opened fire and were killed in the subsequent gunbattle, police said.

Rest in pieces.

UPDATE II: Hot Air has a roundup on all things Mookie.

Aides Say al-Sadr is in Iraq

Despite reports Tuesday saying Mookie had fled to Iran, aides claims he's laying low in Iraq. Whatever the case, he may want to visit a dentist sometime soon (photo courtesy of Gateway Pundit).

Radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr is in Iraq and has not left for Iran, his aides said on Wednesday, after American officials suggested he may have departed to avoid an offensive against militants.

The conflicting reports over the anti-American cleric's whereabouts came after Iraq said on Tuesday it would close its borders with Iran and Syria and lengthen a night curfew in Baghdad to try to curb unrelenting violence in the capital.

Four of Sadr's aides said he was still in Iraq. Some said he was in the holy Shi'ite city of Najaf but had reduced public appearances for "security reasons." They did not elaborate.

Ideally, he'd be laying six feet low.

The youthful firebrand cleric has been keeping a low profile in recent months because of worsening security in Iraq. He normally lives in Najaf -- not Baghdad -- but his stronghold is the capital's sprawling Shi'ite slum called Sadr City.

Two U.S. officials in Washington spoke to Reuters about Sadr after the ABC News network reported he had fled to Iran because of fears he might be targeted by U.S. bombing raids and worries over his safety because of fracturing within his movement.