Iraqi forces clash with Shi'ite gunmen

The fighting in Kut, 100 miles southeast of Baghdad, broke out Thursday night when factions of the Mahdi Army, led by anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, attacked checkpoints throughout the city, officials and witnesses said.

Two police officers and two gunmen were killed during the clashes in Kut, which ended yesterday, according to Interior Ministry spokesman Major General Abdul-Karim Khalaf.

Also yesterday, US and Iraqi forces raided neighborhoods of southern Baghdad and Diwaniyah, 80 miles south of the capital, detaining suspected members of the Mahdi Army, Iraqi police said.

Sadr proclaimed a cease-fire last August and extended it indefinitely last month. But the firebrand cleric, who led two uprisings against US-led forces in 2004, has authorized his followers to defend themselves if attacked.

Sadr's supporters have complained that the Shi'ite-led government has used the cease-fire to accelerate a crackdown against their movement in Baghdad and the Shi'ite heartland south of the capital.

Iraqi security forces are heavily influenced by a rival Shi'ite group, the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, which wields considerable power in the central government and in provincial administrations throughout the south.

Rival Shi'ite groups have been battling for control of the oil-rich south with an eye toward the eventual withdrawal of US-led forces. Shi'ites form an estimated 60 percent of Iraq's 27 million people.

A Sadrist member of parliament alleged that the crackdown in Kut and elsewhere in the south was part of a move by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's Dawa party and the supreme council to prevent Sadr's followers from winning control of key southern provinces in provincial elections expected this fall.

"They have no supporters in the central and southern provinces, but we do," Ahmed al-Massoudi said. "If the crackdown against the Sadrists continues, we will begin consultations with other parliamentary blocs to bring down the government and replace it with a genuinely national one."