http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20040405-032500-2261rBAGHDAD, Iraq, April 5 (UPI) -- Coalition troops clashed with insurgents across Iraq as armed militias took partial control of some cities and a confrontation with a young Shiite cleric threatens to cast the already unstable country into complete civil war.
As the one-year anniversary of the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime approaches, the U.S.-led coalition -- which had previously only had to fight former regime fighters and outside terror groups -- finds itself in open warfare with the followers of Moqtada al-Sadr, a 30-year old junior cleric whose bombastic anti-occupation rhetoric had previously been considered an irritant.
Now his followers openly control small portions of Baghdad and stalk the streets carrying weapons, firing on coalition troops and drawing a military response that has killed at least a dozen civilians in the crossfire. Scores of Iraqis died in various clashes across the country, while at least 12 U.S. soldiers also died. But with the fluid nature of the fighting and inaccessibility of many of the conflict areas to reporters, exact figures are impossible to gauge.
At the same time that the coalition was engaged in its first sustained rebellion by portions of Iraq's Shiite population, it also was in the process of settling old scores in the western city of Fallujah, where the U.S. Marines had closed the city of 500,000 people while hunting for insurgents that have long irritated the occupation authority with sustained attacks on troops.
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