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U.S. Airpower Joins Basra Offensive
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Maliki also extended a 72-hour deadline to April 8 for fighters to hand over medium and heavy weapons.
Dabbagh said Maliki was planning to stay in Basra until order is imposed. "I can't count the days. It depends on the situation," he said.
Residents of Basra reported general calm in the city Friday. But fighting raged in many other places in southern Iraq. South of Najaf, gunmen shot and killed Saad al-Shablawi, mayor of Ghamas, and wounded two of his guards. In retaliation, members of the mayor's tribe went to the Sadr office in the region and set it on fire. They killed two Mahdi militiamen and turned over nine others to Iraqi security forces.
In Souk al-Shiyoukh, a town south of Nasiriyah, the mayor reported clashes erupting overnight when fighters attacked an Iraqi military brigade. In Shatra, north of Nasiriyah, police commanders reported clashes killing two policemen. And in Nasiriyah, police reported fighting between militias and Iraqi security forces in the northeastern part of the city. One person was reported killed.
Dhafir Abu Sadiq, head of the Sadr organization's office in the city of Kut, reported that his men had surrounded dozens of Iraqi soldiers, some of whom decided to join the Sadr forces and others to go home. He said the Mahdi Army now fully controls the Numaniyah region, west of Kut.
In Baghdad's Green Zone, U.S. government employees were going outside only on urgent business and wearing protective gear.
Philip T. Reeker, the embassy spokesman, said employees have the option of sleeping inside the former Hussein palace or in other "hard cover" buildings in the compound, rather than in the compound's thin-roofed residential trailers.
In an e-mail Friday night, Reeker said sleeping in the embassy was clearly a temporary precaution but "highly recommended given the harassing fire we've received in the past week." He went on: "I, for one, have pulled out a cot in my office."
The U.S. military reported repeated clashes in Baghdad with militia fighters.
At 4 a.m. in Sadr City, a helicopter killed four fighters who were engaging U.S. forces with small-arms fire, officials said. At 7 a.m., a U.S. helicopter's Hellfire missile targeted a vehicle armed with rocket-propelled grenades, killing two fighters in the Adhamiyah district of northern Baghdad.
Later in the morning, soldiers fired on militants setting up improvised explosive devices and returning fire from and killing fighters who had rocket-propelled grenade launchers.
"In the last 48 hours, we have seen more extremists," said Lt. Col. Steve Stover, a military spokesman in Baghdad. He said the military had killed 78 "bad guys" in the past three days. "They are violating the rule of law. They are firing rockets indiscriminately. They are criminals and terrorists, and they deserve to die."
Special correspondents Aahad Ali in Basra, Saad Sarhan in Najaf and Zaid Sabah and Dalya Hassan in Baghdad contributed to this report.
