Baghdad under curfew amid clashes
Iraqi PM vows “no retreat” as fight against Shia militias leaves over 130 dead.
Leadership test
Nuri al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister, has based himself in Basra to personally oversee military operations in the city.
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Few journalists have been able to travel to the city, but witnesses said Basra‘s streets were deserted, with shops and businesses shut.
Hassan, a resident of Basra, told Al Jazeera: “For two days now, we woke up to sounds of explosion – we have never witnessed such huge
attacks in Basra.”
He said all cities roads had all been blocked, while Mahdi Army fighters attack Iraqi forces from residential and commercial blocks.
In a speech broadcast on state TV, al-Maliki said: “We have made up our minds to enter this battle, and we will continue until the end.”
He said Iraq had become a “nation of gangs, militias and outlaws” and he was undertaking an “historic mission” in Basra to restore “the law of the land”.
The Basra crackdown is seen as a key test for al-Maliki, with the ability of Iraq‘s leaders and armed forces to control such situations central to US hopes of pulling its own forces out of the country.
‘Bold decision’
At a speech in Ohio on Thursday, George Bush, the US president, praised al-Maliki, citing the violent crackdown on Basra as evidence that his government is increasingly able to handle security without US leadership.
Bush’s speech at a US air force museum in Dayton is one of a series of addresses made in defence of the five-year-old war in Iraq, and intended to prove that the so-called troop surge is having an effect.
Rejecting suggestions that Iraq‘s leaders were “foot dragging”, he said they were “striving to build a modern democracy on the rubble of three decades of tyranny.”
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Praising what he said was al-Maliki’s “bold decision” to take on the Basra militias, he said the move was a turning point in showing that Iraq is taking on more responsibility.
“There’s a strong commitment by the central government of Iraq to say that no one is above the law,” Bush said.
Thousands of al-Sadr supporters in Baghdad on Thursday demonstrated against the current crackdown, calling on the Iraqi prime minister to resign.
In the Kazimiyah neighbourhood, marching protesters denounced al-Maliki as a “new dictator” while carrying a coffin bearing a crossed-out picture of the US-backed prime minister.
Protests also took place in the mainly Shia district of Sadr City.
Al-Sadr himself released a statement on Thursday calling for a political solution to the growing crisis and an end to the “shedding of Iraqi blood.”
But the statement, released by a close aide, stopped short of ordering the Mahdi Army to halt fighting.