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Iraqi Troops Battle Shiite Militiamen In Southern City
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By late afternoon, the fighting had subsided. It was soon clear who had won.
"The city is fully controlled by the militia of Jaish al-Mahdi now," said Ahmed Fadhil, 45, a school teacher living in the center of Diwaniyah, using the Arabic term for Sadr's militia. "There are no police or Iraqi army in the streets of the city. I can see only the gunmen of Mahdi Army in the streets."
At a news conference, the governor of Diwaniyah, Khalil Ibrahim said that he visited Sadr in the Shiite holy city of Najaf on Monday. He said Sadr had requested an investigation into what had happened in Diwaniyah.
For now, he said, the Mahdi Army still controls two big neighborhoods, "and neither the American forces nor Iraqi forces were able to enter these neighborhoods yet."
"The police refuse to go back to the streets, especially after three of their cars were set on fire Thursday," Ibrahim said.
On Monday, residents were stunned by their city's transformation.
"We had a stable city," said Musawi. "Now all the shops are closed. The streets are empty. No one is going out to the streets, and there is a curfew. It is a ghost city."
Meanwhile in Baghdad, a suicide bomber in a car detonated explosives at a checkpoint leading into the Interior Ministry, where a meeting of police chiefs from Iraq's 18 provinces was scheduled. The blast killed 15 people and injured 35.
The visiting British defense minister, Des Browne, told reporters in Baghdad that U.S.-led troops planned to turn over a second province, Dhi Qar, to Iraqi security forces next month. He joined other Western and Iraqi officials in pulling back recently from warnings last month -- including from Britain's outgoing ambassador to Iraq -- that Iraq could slide into all-out civil war. "My view is there is not a civil war in this country, and it is not likely that a civil war will develop," Browne said.
Correspondent Ellen Knickmeyer, special correspondents Saad Sarhan, K.I. Ibrahim and Naseer Nouri and other Washington Post staff in Iraq contributed to this report.
