Iraqi Troops Patrol Southern Iraq City After Days of Violence
By VOA News
21 October 2006
An Iraqi police commando walks amid rubble at a destroyed police station in southern city of Amara, Oct. 20, 2006
Iraqi troops have been deployed in the southern city of Amara to protect a fragile truce after two days of clashes involving police and Shi＇ite militia fighters.
Witnesses say shops and government offices re-opened Saturday while army units manned checkpoints around the city.
Clashes erupted Thursday between the Shi＇ite factions after police detained a member of radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr＇s Mahdi Army militia. Security officials say at least 10 policemen and 15 militiamen were killed, and 90 other people wounded in the fighting.
In another development, the U.S. military says coalition forces killed a suspected senior al-Qaida-in-Iraq leader and detained seven other suspected terrorists during a raid today in Ramadi.
In Baghdad, a suicide bomber blew himself up on a bus, killing four people and injuring 15 others.
On the political front, Iraqi senior Shi＇ite and Sunni clerics ended their two-day meeting Friday in Islam＇s holiest city, Mecca, in Saudi Arabia, by issuing a series of edicts forbidding violence between the two Muslim sects.
The meeting, sponsored by the Saudi-based Organization of the Islamic Conference, was called in a bid to stop sectarian bloodshed in Iraq.
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