Radical Shiite Cleric Hints at Militia Attacks to Protest Israel’s Actions

[sabra]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/15/world/middleeast/15iraq.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Radical Shiite Cleric Hints at Militia Attacks to Protest Israel’s Actions

BAGHDAD, Iraq, July 14 — The radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr said Friday that Iraqis would not “sit by with folded hands” while Israel struck at Lebanon, signaling a possible increase in attacks from his mercurial militia, the Mahdi Army.

Mr. Sadr’s statement was issued at a time of rising tensions between the American military and the Mahdi Army, with American forces carrying out raids against Mahdi hideouts and arresting senior leaders.

American commanders have strongly denounced militias in recent days and have pledged to try to curtail the militias’ death squads, which they say are feeding the spiraling cycles of sectarian violence. Many Sunni Arabs blame the Sadr militia for abductions and killings, including an episode on July 9 in which militiamen seized up to dozens of Sunni Arabs in the Jihad neighborhood of Baghdad and shot them in the head.

“Eyes are shedding tears, and the heart feels pain and sadness for our people in Lebanon due to the bombing, terror and clear aggression that the Zionist enemy conducts and that is shielded by a number of countries, including the United States,” Mr. Sadr said in the statement.

[Monkeyman]

1. You have to know this would happen

[Earth_First]

2. al-Sadr back in the news?

I loathe how every so often one of the original Emanuel Goldstein's are paraded through the media.