BAGHDAD—Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki raised the stakes in his five-day-old crackdown on Shi'ite militants on Saturday, describing his foes as "worse than al Qaeda".
Fighting raged in Basra and Baghdad, threatening to draw U.S. forces deeper into Maliki's confrontation with cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army militia and endangering a ceasefire that has been in place for seven months.
U.S. forces said they had killed 48 militants in air strikes and gun battles across the capital the previous day.
At least 133 bodies and 647 wounded were taken into hospitals in eastern Baghdad over five days of clashes, the head of the area's health directorate, Ali Bustan, said.
In Basra, government troops said they had killed 120 fighters. Scores of people were reported killed in other towns across the south where fighting has spread.
"We used to talk about al Qaeda. Unfortunately it seems there are some among us who are worse than al Qaeda," Maliki said in a televised meeting with tribal leaders in Basra, where he has personally overseen the crackdown since Tuesday.
After years in which Iraq was torn apart by violence between Shi'ites and Sunni Arab militants like al Qaeda, the past week's violence has exposed another bloody rift -- among Shi'ites themselves. Parties in Maliki's government are battling followers of Sadr, who in many Shi'ite areas rule the streets.
The crackdown poses a dilemma for the United States.
NAJAF, Iraq—Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr has told his followers not to lay down their arms, rejecting a demand by the government, which launched a crackdown against them this week, a top aide said on Saturday.
"Moqtada al-Sadr asks his followers not to deliver weapons to the government. Weapons should be turned over only to a government which can expel the occupiers," aide Hassan Zargani told Reuters by telephone. Another Sadr official, Haidar al-Jabari, confirmed the remarks.
On the one hand, it wants Iraqi forces to take the lead on security, but on the other hand this action endangers a Sadr truce which has been key to a fall in violence.
Washington has so far backed Maliki to the hilt and President George W. Bush has called the crackdown a "defining moment in the history of a free Iraq".
But the spread of violence risks undoing a year of security improvements and jeopardising plans for U.S. troops to withdraw.
U.S. arch-foe Iran has called for an end to the inter-Shi'ite fighting which it says could provide a "pretext" for U.S. troops to stay on.
"The key question now is what the United States is going to do," said Joost Hiltermann, of the International Crisis Group think tank.
"If it allows (the crackdown) to go forward the ceasefire will unravel and the U.S. will face the Sadr movement in its full power."
Sistani Meeting
A Sadr aide said his representatives had met the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's highest Shi'ite authority, in a bid to end the violence. But a government spokesman rejected any talks with gunmen who "threaten the security of citizens in Basra".
Iraq's security forces have struggled to take control of neighbourhoods in Basra from the Mehdi Army and have had to call in U.S. air strikes on militant positions.
Mehdi Army fighters in black masks still control the streets of much of Iraq's second-biggest city, manning checkpoints and openly brandishing rifles, machineguns and rocket launchers, a Reuters reporter in the city said.
"We will fight on and never give up our weapons," Mehdi Army deputy military commander in Basra Abu Hassan al-Daraji told Reuters by telephone. "We will not turn over a single bullet."
In Baghdad's Sadr City, Sadr's main stronghold, a group of Iraqi police and soldiers surrendered themselves and their weapons to the local Sadr office, a Reuters photographer said.
The spokesman for Iraqi security forces in Baghdad, Major- General Qassim Moussawi, sought to play down the desertions, saying he had received reports of only 15 men surrendering. He said those who did so would be court-martialled.
Mehdi Army fighters clashed with government forces on the western outskirts of Kerbala, one of Shi'ite Islam's holiest cities. Iraqi commander Major-General Raad Jawdat said his forces had killed 21 "outlaws" and arrested 57 others.
Fighting was also reported in eastern Kut, the southern city where there have been some of the worst clashes between the Mehdi Army and Iraqi forces. Police said three people also died in gunbattles in the town of Suwaira, 60 km south of Baghdad.
Sadr, who led two anti-U.S. revolts in 2004, helped install Maliki in power after an election in 2005 but broke with him last year. He declared a ceasefire last August that U.S. commanders praised but has remained implacably anti-American.
In a rare interview taped just before this week's outbreak of violence, he told al-Jazeera television: "I call on the Arab League, the Organisation of the Islamic Conference and the United Nations to recognise the legitimacy of the resistance."
