U.S. Soldiers Arrest Iraqi Minister’s Guards
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
A member of a Shiite group that operates a militia, Iraq’s health minister, Ali al-Shemari, said yesterday American soldiers arrested seven of his bodyguards in a pre-dawn raid on his office.
“There was no reason to arrest them. It is a provocation,” Mr. Shemari said. Mr. Shemari is a member of the movement led by a radical Shiite cleric, Muqtada al-Sadr, who is head of the biggest Shiite militia, the Mahdi Army.
However, an American military statement said coalition forces received a tip that “15 criminals wearing Iraqi army uniforms” had kidnapped six people and taken them to the Ministry of Health. Iraqi and American soldiers searched the building and did not find any kidnap victims. But five detainees were taken for questioning “based on their positive identification by the tipster.”
Car bombs and a rocket barrage struck a crowded predominantly Shiite neighborhood in Baghdad late yesterday, killing at least 47 and wounding at least 148, authorities said.
