Troops accused of mosque massacre

By Michael Georgy in Baghdad

03/27/06 "Reuters" -- -- US troops have mounted two raids against Iraqi Shiite forces in Baghdad, killing up to 20 gunmen in a raid on a radical mosque and arresting more than 40 Interior Ministry personnel guarding a secret prison.

Details were sketchy today, but the two operations looked like US strikes against sectarian Shiite militias of the kind the US ambassador has said must be eliminated if Iraq is to form a unity government and halt a slide toward civil war.
The news came amid separate reports that Iraqi police and soldiers had found 30 bodies, most of them beheaded, near a village north of Baghdad.

There was no immediate word on the identities of the victims or those responsible for the slaughter, which had been reported by residents in Mullah Eid.

Meanwhile, the US military made no immediate official comment on the raids by its troops, and a senior Interior Ministry official denied the arrests of its personnel at a facility in central Baghdad where government and political sources said US troops freed 17 foreign prisoners.

A US source confirmed that American and Iraqi forces had detained 41 Interior Ministry personnel guarding a secret bunker complex.

Most foreigners in detention are accused of being Sunni al-Qaeda fighters who come to Iraq to fight Americans and Shiites.

In November, US troops freed 173 mostly Sunni prisoners, some of whom had been tortured, from a secret Interior Ministry facility in Baghdad.

Iraqi police and residents said a US raid on a Shiite mosque in the Shaab district of east Baghdad sparked fierce clashes with militiamen of the Mehdi Army loyal to radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. A medical source at Yarmouk hospital said he saw 18 bodies of Iraqis killed in the operation.

Police sources said 20 Mehdi Army fighters were killed in the fighting, close to Sadr's stronghold in the Sadr City slum, and five vehicles belonging to the militia were burned.

A senior aide to Sadr, in comments capable of inflaming passions among the radical cleric's supporters, accused US troops of shooting dead more than 20 unarmed worshippers at the Mustapha mosque after tying them up. The mosque's faithful follow Sadr but the aide denied they were Mehdi Army gunmen.

"The American forces went into Mustapha mosque at prayers and killed more than 20 worshippers," Hazin al-Araji said.

"They tied them up and shot them."

Earlier, in an unusual admission, Interior Ministry officials said a police major accused of taking part in death squad killings had been arrested in Baquba, north-east of Baghdad.

Arkan al-Bawi, who works in Diyala province northeast of Baghdad and is the brother of the provincial police chief, was detained after visiting the ministry.

Once dominant minority Sunni Arabs accuse the Shiite-led government of sanctioning death squads, which the government denies despite mounting evidence, including accusations by the US State Department, that they operate with impunity.

Hundreds of bodies have been found since the bombing of the Shiite shrine last month in Samarra, which left Iraqi leaders openly speaking of civil war for the first time but has failed to jolt them into a deal on a new government.

Any new cabinet must try to stamp out the death squads and pro-government militias while also facing down a Sunni insurgency that has killed thousands, most of them Shiites.

Copyright 2006 News Limited