The Shiite militia run by the anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr seized control of a southern Iraqi city on Friday, witnesses and police said.
Mahdi Army fighters stormed three main police stations Friday morning, residents said, planting explosives that flattened the buildings in Amarah, a city just 30 miles from the Iranian border that was under British command until August, when it was returned to Iraqi government control.
Some 800 fighters with Kalashnikov rifles and rocket-propelled grenades were patrolling in commandeered police vehicles, witnesses said. Other fighters set up roadblocks on routes into the city. The militiamen later withdrew from their positions and lifted their siege of police headquarters under a temporary truce negotiated with an al-Sadr envoy.
The Iraqi army dispatched two companies to Amarah from Basra, the south's largest city. Mohammad al-Alaskari, a Defense Ministry spokesman, said "the situation is still tense."
At least 15 people, including five militiamen, one policeman and two bystanders, had been killed in clashes since Friday, Dr. Zamil Shia, director of Amarah's department of health, said by telephone from the city, about 200 miles southeast of Baghdad. The fighting also injured at least 59 people - including 22 civilians - according to Riyadh Saed, the duty physician at the city's main hospital.
