The US military announced that nine US soldiers were killed over the weekend in and around Baghdad, eight by roadside bombs and one by gunfire.
Dr. Mohammed Abdul-Muhsen of the city's general hospital said the 40 people killed in Diwaniyah included 25 Iraqi soldiers, 10 civilians, and five militiamen. He said the hospital treated 75 wounded.
Diwaniyah, 80 miles south of Baghdad, is a Shi'ite-dominated city where the influence of cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army has been gradually increasing. The militia already runs a virtual parallel government in Sadr City, a slum in eastern Baghdad.
But the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shi'ite, has found it difficult to rein in Sadr, whose movement holds 30 of the 275 seats in parliament and five Cabinet posts. Sadr's backing also helped Maliki win the top job during painstaking negotiations within the Shi'ite alliance that led to the ouster of Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari.
Many Sunnis have expressed disappointment that Maliki's government has not moved to curb Shi'ite militias, especially the Mahdi Army. A prominent hard-line Iraqi Sunni cleric, Harith al-Dhari, said Friday he was willing to meet with top Shi'ite religious leaders, part of an initiative to curb sectarian violence -- but also to press Shi'ite leaders into a response.
American forces also have been wary of confronting the militia, because of Sadr's clout over the government and his large following among majority Shi'ites. Sadr mounted two major uprisings against the American-led coalition in 2004 when US authorities closed his newspaper and pushed an Iraqi judge into issuing an arrest warrant against him.
Sheikh Abdul-Razaq al-Nidawi, the manager of Sadr's office in Diwaniyah, said that trouble had been brewing since Saturday night when the Iraqi Army arrested a Sadr supporter from the Jumhouri neighborhood. On Sunday, the army raided the same place and ``a gunfight erupted between them and the Mahdi Army," Nidawi said.
Army Captain Fatik Aied said gunbattles broke out at about 11 p.m. Sunday south of Diwaniyah, when Iraqi soldiers conducted raids in three neighborhoods to flush out militiamen and seize weapons.
