Sadr Rails Against Prison Abuse as Troops Battle His Forces

Surrounded by a legion of armed followers and ignoring the U.S. military offensive closing in on him, Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada Sadr swept into the mosque here Friday and vowed to rid Iraq of its American occupiers.

Even as fighting raged in predominantly Shiite cities nearby, the young cleric who has led a monthlong rebellion in south-central Iraq seized upon the inflammatory issue of the moment, denouncing the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. soldiers and demanding that the Americans involved face Iraqi justice.

“How do you [Americans] want to control the world when you cannot control a handful of soldiers?” Sadr asked in his Friday sermon as he dismissed President Bush’s apology the day before as an empty gesture. “What sort of freedom and democracy can we expect from you when you take such joy in torturing Iraqi prisoners?”

The crowd, gathered for prayers, erupted in cheers.

Twenty-four Iraqis were killed in fighting Friday and several more captured, U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Mark Hertling said. Troops deactivated 11 roadside bombs in Karbala and four U.S. soldiers suffered minor injuries.

In Karbala, U.S. armored units clashed throughout the morning with Sadr’s militiamen armed with rocket-propelled grenades. The fighting ended in the vicinity of the holy city’s religious shrines. Explosions and gunfire were heard near a mosque that serves as Sadr’s local headquarters and is about 500 yards from two major shrines. U.S. military spokesmen said troops avoided the revered sites.

In Najaf, 50 miles to the south and close to Kufa, U.S. forces traded mortar fire with militiamen early Friday, and American warplanes dropped a 500-pound bomb on the city’s fringes, U.S. officials said. An Iraqi family of six, including three small children, was killed in U.S. return fire, Associated Press reported.

The Americans also sprinkled the road between Najaf and Kufa with leaflets urging Iraqi militiamen to lay down their weapons.

“To the followers of Muqtada Sadr,” the leaflets said, “to continue fighting will lead to your death. You choose your destiny.”

This week, the U.S. launched an offensive to squelch Sadr’s rebellion, detain him and retake control of major Shiite cities from his militia, which he calls the Mahdi Army. Troops and tanks recaptured the governor’s office in Najaf on Thursday and have fought with militiamen for three days running.

But on Friday, the Shiite fighters, dressed in black and armed with rocket-propelled-grenade launchers and assault rifles, sauntered through Kufa, Najaf and Karbala in an effort to reassert their authority.

The Americans “will be forced out sooner or later,” Sadr said in his Friday sermon.

The militant cleric jumped on the public furor over the revelations of prisoner abuse to stir up his audience. He said the treatment exposed the hypocrisy of the Bush administration’s claims to be promoting democracy.

In a similar vein, one of Sadr’s senior aides went before worshippers in the southern city of Basra on Friday, waving what he claimed were photographs of three Iraqi women being raped at a British-run prison. The aide, Sheik Abdulsattar Bahadli, announced that anyone capturing a female British soldier would be allowed to keep her as a slave, while the capture of a male British soldier would garner $350. He seemed to suggest the prison abuse justified such actions.

Many Iraqis see the prison scandal as the latest in a long line of U.S. abuses and failures in Washington’s mission to conquer Iraq. On Friday, occupation officials continued to struggle to soften the blow.

“I don’t believe the relationship is irreparable,” said Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the chief military spokesman in Baghdad. “But it’s going to take some effort on the part of the Americans.”

Efforts that include delivering justice to the Iraqis, he said, reiterating that any courts-martial of implicated U.S. soldiers would be public.

Dan Senor, the chief spokesman for L. Paul Bremer III, head of the civilian authority here, said his boss became aware of allegations of severe mistreatment at the Abu Ghraib prison west of Baghdad in January. The international Red Cross said Friday it had informed people in Bremer’s office about a year ago.

With less than eight weeks to go before the U.S. occupation authority is scheduled to hand over sovereignty to an interim Iraqi government, United Nations special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi began meetings Friday with key Iraqi leaders and politicians. Brahimi will help shape the interim government, marking the renewal of U.N. participation in the Iraqi process.

In other violence, four Iraqi policemen were killed by a roadside bomb in the northern city of Mosul.

Two journalists -- a Pole and an Algerian -- were killed south of Baghdad, and two Iraqi policemen were injured in a mortar attack on the Italian base near the southern city of Nasiriya.

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Salman reported from Kufa and Wilkinson from Baghdad.