Sadr City’s mayor target of an attack

The mayor of the Shiite stronghold of Sadr City narrowly escaped an assassination attempt Thursday, less than two weeks after negotiations he led with U.S. military officials cleared the way for American troops to move into the area.

Also Thursday, four American soldiers died when two roadside bombs exploded in quick succession in east Baghdad, the U.S. military said. It also announced the death of a Marine on Wednesday in the western province of Al Anbar. The deaths brought to at least 3,207 the number of U.S. troops killed in the Iraq theater since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003.

The shooting in Sadr City, which killed two of Mayor Raheem Darraji’s bodyguards, underscored the seething tensions in the vast Shiite Muslim slum, where opposition to American forces runs deep despite the peaceful establishment of a U.S.-Iraqi security post there this month.

For several days, Darraji led quiet negotiations with U.S. and Iraqi military officials and Sadr City civic leaders as troops made plans to move into the teeming east Baghdad district. Darraji was injured in the attack, in which gunmen drove up beside his vehicle and opened fire.

Sadr City is a stronghold of anti-U.S. radical Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr, a fierce opponent of the U.S. presence in Iraq, whose militiamen have battled American forces. Although Sadr has reeled in his Al Mahdi militia since mid-February, when a new U.S.-Iraqi security crackdown began in the capital, there have been concerns that some of his militant followers could return to action if things did not go their way.

And lately, little has gone well for Shiites in Baghdad, despite the insistence of U.S. and Iraqi officials that the security operation is working. Suicide bombings, the hallmark of Sunni Arab insurgents, have increased since the crackdown was launched and have killed hundreds of Shiites in Baghdad, including at least 10 who died Thursday.

They included 18-year-old Ahmed Draiwel, a vendor in a Sadr City market, who died trying to save scores of others when a carton containing a bomb exploded in his arms. Witnesses said Draiwel, who sold vegetables from a stall in the outdoor market, spotted the carton after someone left it under a table.

Vendors have been especially cautious about strange boxes and bags because of the rash of bombings at markets across Baghdad. When Draiwel saw the carton, he began asking whom it belonged to. He quickly realized it did not belong there.

“He immediately picked it up and started shouting, ‘Beware! Leave the place!’ ” said Ammar Saadi, another vendor.

As the crowd around him fled in panic, Draiwel ran with the box in his arms toward a trash pile in an open area, where he planned to hurl the container. But he realized he could not save himself and began praying out loud.

“He started to say, ‘I witness that there is no god but God,’ ” Saadi said. As he was about to throw the carton, it blew up, killing him and blowing off his brother’s arm.

“He was so nice with the people and the customers,” Saadi said of Draiwel.

Hours later, a suicide bomber struck a busy square in a Shiite area near downtown Baghdad, killing at least eight people, three of them Iraqi soldiers. Another suicide bomber targeted an Iraqi military checkpoint in west Baghdad, killing one soldier.

South of Baghdad, in Iskandariya, a suicide bomber rammed his car into a bus and killed at least four people.

Though U.S. military officials say the number of such car bombs has increased and reached a record high in February, they also say sectarian killings normally attributed to Shiite death squads have decreased since the joint security effort was launched.

This can be measured in the number of slaying victims found dumped throughout Baghdad each day, said Army Maj. Gen. Joseph Fil Jr., the commander of U.S. troops in the capital. Before the crackdown began, it was not unusual for morgue and police officials to report finding 40 to 60 bodies a day. Now, the average is less than 20, according to morgue numbers, and Fil said it was not unusual for the number to be as low as 10.

On Thursday, 17 bodies were picked up.

Fil gave tacit credit to Sadr for the decrease in such killings, saying the cleric had persuaded his followers to restrain themselves. Fil, who commands about 43,000 troops in Baghdad and three provinces to the south, said this restraint also had allowed U.S. and Iraqi troops to expand the security plan to Sadr City sooner than anticipated.

The military moved into Sadr City with virtually no resistance March 4, after talks with Darraji, and troops have established a permanent post there.

“I think Sadr has been very clear in his guidance, that the time is now right for his followers to work with Iraqi security forces,” Fil said of the Shiite leader.

Fil acknowledged that he did not know Sadr’s motivation. Many analysts have suggested that he is merely waiting for U.S. forces to hand security over to Iraqi troops and leave, and that he then plans to put his militiamen back on the streets.

Others are not so sure.

Frederick W. Kagan, an analyst at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, points out that U.S. military units have not been watching passively, but have been actively pursuing Al Mahdi leaders, taking steps to degrade Sadr’s power.

Fil said that “all options remain on the table” if militias spring back into action.

The U.S. military’s current strategy is to try to force Sadr to choose between politics and armed struggle. If he chooses politics, the United States presumably will allow him to continue to play a role in the government, where his bloc controls 30 legislative seats. But if he chooses to try to retain his military power, U.S. forces may confront him.

“We have thought for some time Muqtada is sort of at a crossroads,” a senior Pentagon official said in a recent interview. “He has dabbled in two fields. He has played himself as the politician and on the other hand he is a militia leader. He hasn’t chosen which path he is going to take.

“The aim here is we need to make his paths diverge, so he has to choose,” added the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity when discussing strategy. “I suspect the fact we haven’t heard from him means ... he is trying to figure out the best prospect for him to survive and flourish.”

Sadr could face pressure from loyalists if they see themselves paying the price of a security plan that he has denounced because of its inclusion of American forces and its failure to halt Sunni violence.

Ghufran Saidi, a lawmaker with the pro-Sadr bloc in parliament, said Sadr supporters had agreed on the security plan “on the condition that it is carried out by Iraqis; occupiers can provide nothing.”

Iraqis were willing to back the plan if it reduced violence, she said.

“However, if the plan doesn’t succeed, then we might reconsider.”

susman@latimes.com

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Times staff writers Saif Hameed, Raheem Salman and Suhail Ahmad in Baghdad and Julian E. Barnes in Washington and special correspondents in Baghdad contributed to this report.