Shiite militia backtracks on Sadr cease-fire order

BAGHDAD —  Aides to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr on Thursday appeared to place conditions on his call for a six-month halt to his militia’s operations, but the Iraqi capital was noticeably calm a day after the announced stand-down.

The U.S. military, meanwhile, reported the deaths of two soldiers in combat operations, one in west Baghdad on Thursday and the other in restive Diyala province the previous day. Their deaths brought to 3,735 the number of U.S. troops killed in Iraq since March 2003, according to the website icasualties.org.

Iraqis in the town of Nubai, about 40 miles north of Baghdad, in Salahuddin province, reported seeing a U.S. helicopter explode and crash early Thursday, but the U.S. military denied the report. “There was no downed aircraft today for all coalition forces in Iraq,” said Sgt. Zachary Unsell of the Multinational Forces public affairs office in Baghdad.

Also Thursday, an insurgent group that calls itself the Islamic State of Iraq claimed on its Arabic-language website to have executed a kidnapped employee of the U.S. Embassy here. The victim was identified as Zaher Abdel Mohsin Abdel-Saheb and said to be an official of the U.S. government. A senior U.S. diplomat, however, said the name was unfamiliar and not listed in any roster of current employees.

Elsewhere in Iraq, assassins, roadside bombs and booby-trapped cars killed at least a dozen people, including four Iraqi policemen in Samarra and a senior oil industry official in Najaf.

Two bombs were detonated in the ethnically divided city of Kirkuk. The second blast killed at least seven people and injured 10 in a crowd that gathered at the scene of the first blast.

Also in Kirkuk, two suspected insurgents with a Katyusha rocket in their car were killed when the missile accidentally exploded, said Iraqi police Col. Yakdar Mohammed.

Two roadside bombs went off in downtown Baghdad, killing a civilian and injuring five others on what passed for a quiet day in the capital, which has been the focus of stepped-up counterinsurgency operations by U.S.-led forces in recent months. The number of corpses found around the capital Thursday -- five -- was also about half the usual daily number of victims of sectarian death squads.

Sadr, who led his powerful Mahdi Army in two battles with U.S. forces in 2004, announced Wednesday that he was ordering a halt to hostile actions for six months to purge his ranks of alleged rogue elements who he said had been attacking fellow Shiites and giving his militia a bad name.

But in Sadr City, Baghdad’s sprawling Shiite slum and Mahdi Army stronghold, an aide to the anti-U.S. cleric seemed to equivocate. The militia operations are frozen for no more than six months, said the aide, Abu Firas Mutairi, “and the halt can be revoked at any time if there is a need for that.”

Sadr’s official spokesman in Najaf, Sheik Ahmed Shibani, said the stand-down did not mean “stopping resistance against the occupation.”

U.S. officials welcomed Sadr’s announcement but said it was too early to tell whether it was sincere or sustainable.

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carol.williams@latimes.com

Special correspondent Saad Fakhrildeen in Najaf and special correspondents in Kirkuk and Taji contributed to this report.