IRAQ BRACES FOR MAJOR OFFENSIVE ON MILITIAS: BLASTS HIT BAGHDAD

Baghdad_(dpa) _ The Iraqi government is bracing for a big offensive against loyalists of cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, according to a politician from his bloc, while three people were killed and 20 injured in attacks, including a former commander of al-Qaeda in Iraq group.

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Fighting between government and US troops and al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia raging since the end of March has left around 1,000 people dead and over 2,500 wounded, many of them civilians.

"Iraqi and US military preparations are underway to move into Sadr City," Asma al-Musawi, a member of al-Sadr Bloc, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

The government has told people in two of the 79 neighbourhoods that make up Sadr City to leave their homes in preparation for a push into the area, al-Musawi said.

"The area is on the brink of a big humanitarian disaster," she warned.
The battle has intensified recently with street to street and house to house fighting. Government and US forces have so far failed to subdue the militiamen despite almost daily airstrikes.
US troops have set up concrete barriers in the southern parts of the district.
Hundreds of people have fled the fighting in the past days.

Elsewhere in Baghdad, three people were killed and 16 injured in four blasts, security officials said.

In one incident, a bomb blast on a bus left one passenger and four others injured in Baladiyat in east Baghdad.

An Iraqi army patrol was hit by a bomb near a playground in Shaab. Five army personnel were injured.

In another blast, three civilians were injured by a bomb that went off near the National Theatre in the central Karada district, which was the scene of a bomb attack Tuesday targeting the wife of the Iraqi president.

Hiro Ibrahim survived the attack, in which several soldiers and civilians were injured.
A rocket attack in the centre of the city caused two fatalities and left four people wounded.

In the northern Salahaddin province, a commander of a tribal police unit, who was formerly a senior member of the al-Qaeda terrorist network in Iraq, was wounded along with three policemen in a suicide bombing.

A suicide bomber wearing an explosive belt attacked the motorcade of the police chief of Duluiyah and his companions, including Mullah Nazim al-Juburi, the commander of the local Awakening Council, police sources told the Voices of Iraq news agency.

Al-Juburi was lightly injured in the attack, which occurred in Duluiyah.
The Awakening Councils are US-backed tribal forces formed in Sunni areas to fight insurgents of Sunni extremist groups, such as al-Qaeda in Iraq.

Al-Juburi, who is now the imam of the main mosque in Duluiyah, was himself a leader of the al-Qaeda in Iraq group for the past four years until he turned against it and set up the local Awakening Council.

Also in Salahaddin, tribal policemen killed four insurgents and found a weapon cache in Tikrit, 175 kilometres north of Baghdad, the US military said Thursday. dpa str sf ds pmc mga