World

Some Iraq Rebels Hand In Guns

October 11, 2004 / 11:02 AM EDT / CBS/AP

Followers of radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr trickled in to police stations in Baghdad's Sadr City district to hand in weapons Monday under a deal seen as a key step toward ending weeks of fighting with U.S. and Iraqi forces in the Shiite militant stronghold.

The arms transfer came after Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, making an unannounced visit to Iraq, said that Iraqis must take "the seeds of security" that the U.S. military has planted and grow their political and economic system.

"We can help, but we can't do it. You have to do it," Rumsfeld told senior Iraqi commanders on Sunday.

In preparation from the turn over of weapons, checkpoints were set up along the roads to three Sadr City police stations, and Iraqi National Guard members took up position on the surrounding rooftops.

At al-Nasr station, Police Maj. Kadhim Salman said fighters had turned in machine guns, TNT paste, land mines and other explosives.

In other developments:

Two U.S. soldiers from Task Force Baghdad were killed and five wounded Monday in a rocket attack in southern Baghdad, the military said. At least 1,064 U.S. troops have died in Iraq.

The U.S.-led war in Iraq has become a distraction in the international war against terrorism, Israel's leading strategic think tank said in its annual report released Monday. The Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University said that instead of striking a blow against Islamic extremists, the war "has created momentum for many terrorist elements, but chiefly al Qaeda and its affiliates."

Bush administration officials are taking an aggressive line defending the war. Despite last week's report showing Iraq had no WMD stockpiles or programs, and that its capabilities had eroded since 1991, national security adviser Condoleeza Rice told Fox News on Sunday, "This was a gathering and growing threat, and it was time to take care of it."

In Mosul, 225 miles northwest of Baghdad, a car bomb exploded Monday as an American military convoy was passing by, witnesses said. There was no immediate word on casualties. Clashes continued between U.S. forces and insurgents in Hit, 100 miles west of Baghdad and in the insurgent stronghold of Ramadi overnight.

Seven men believed to belong to one of the largest kidnapping gangs in the northern city of Kirkuk were arrested in a dawn raid Monday that freed two Iraqi hostages, police said.

Mobile phone service in the Baghdad area was out of service Monday as employees of the communications company went on strike to protest the kidnapping of two Egyptian engineers.

The Czech government wants to extend the mandate of its 100-strong contingent of military police in Iraq beyond the current Dec. 31 deadline, an official said Sunday.

In the Sadr City weapons handover, fighters are supposed to be compensated for the weapons they turn in, but Salman said those responsible for the payments hadn't turned up yet. So, receipts were issued instead.

Malik Jomaa walked up to the station with a white bag containing two grenade launchers slung over his shoulder.

"God willing, there will be no more fighting and Sadr City will live in peace," said the 20-year-old fighter in a track suit.

Outside the Habibiya police station, a pickup truck offloaded some 20 grenade launchers and dozens of mortar rounds, Associate Press Television News footage showed. Guns and explosives were spread out on the ground. U.S. soldiers supervised the process from a distance.

Al-Sadr's Mahdi Army agreed over the weekend to hand in its medium and heavy weapons in Sadr City. The arms transfer is supposed to last five days, after which Iraqi police and National Guardsmen will assume security responsibility for the teeming Shiite slum, which is home to more than 2 million people.

In return, the government has promised to start releasing detained al-Sadr followers, provided they did not commit crimes. It has also suspended raids in the northeastern Baghdad district.

Vice President Ibrahim al-Jaafari welcomed the handover Monday as a "good and positive initiative," telling APTN that he hoped other insurgent enclaves would follow Sadr City's example.

Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's interim administration has committed more than $500 million to rebuilding Sadr City, scene of heavy clashes between U.S. troops and al-Sadr's militia.

This is not the first time Iraqi authorities have tried to make peace with the Mahdi Army. A peace deal brokered after heavy fighting in the holy city of Najaf in August allowed the militia to walk away with its weapons and clashes continued in Sadr City.

So far, al-Sadr has not pledged to disband his militia, a key U.S. and Iraqi government demand. But American and Iraqi authorities are eager to end the clashes in the Shiite stronghold so they can concentrate on suppressing the country's more widespread Sunni insurgency.

Rumsfeld traveled 12 hours Sunday from a dusty air base in Iraq's western desert, to the protective zone in Baghdad where the U.S. Embassy and the interim Iraqi government are preparing for January elections, to the provincial capital of Kirkuk in the north.

He said he saw evidence that the Iraqis are on the right track, but that a lot of effort was still needed.

"It won't be easy and it won't be smooth," he told several hundred South Koreans over dinner at their new outpost on the outskirts of Irbil, west of Kirkuk, the final stop on his whirlwind one-day tour.

Rumsfeld's visit came as car bombers struck twice in rapid succession in Baghdad Sunday, killing at least 11 people including an American soldier.

Iraq's most feared terror group — Tawhid and Jihad — claimed responsibility for the near-simultaneous car bombings, one near an east Baghdad police academy and the other outside an east Baghdad market as an American military convoy was passing by.

An American soldier was fatally injured in the convoy attack, U.S. officials said. One Iraqi was wounded in that attack.

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