American and Iraqi forces
launched a raid on Friday in the Shia slums of Sadr City apparently looking for a Shia militia commander named Abu Deraa.
Abu Deraa -- the "Shiite Zarqawi" -- has quickly achieved legendary status as a butcher of Sunnis.
But it not known whether the man whose name is derived from the body armor he took off a dead soldier was actually captured or escaped the firefight.
BAGHDAD (AFP) - Sadr City and Internet bulletin boards buzzed with talk that a US-Iraqi raid on the poor Shiite district that killed nine was targeting a militiaman nicknamed the "Shiite Zarqawi".
There were suggestions that the unnamed "high-level insurgent leader" US forces said they had captured in Friday's nighttime raid on the industrial "Kisra wa Atash" neighbourhood in the northern fringes of Sadr city was a shadowy and brutal Shiite militiaman known as Abu Deraa.
The operation, which Iraqi security sources said lasted for about four hours, also wounded about 30 people and resulted in heavy damage to buildings in the area.
The assault was unusual in that Shia militia were targeted. Civilians may have been killed or might not have. Who knows? Doesn't seem to matter much over there anymore.
Neighbors who witnessed the assault in Baghdad, in the crowded working- class neighborhood of Sadr City, said the firefight began around 1:30 a.m. It lasted 43 minutes, according to American officials, as government forces overwhelmed militia members with the help of an American aircraft that dropped three 105 mm rounds.
At least 13 people were killed, including women and children, and 39 were wounded, according to an official at Imam Ali Hospital in Sadr City who requested anonymity out of concern for his safety.
American military officials said they could not confirm whether any civilians had been killed in the attack.
"There are no known civilian casualties which the Iraqi forces observed," Major General William Caldwell, a top U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, said during a press briefing.
"Doesn't mean there wasn't any, but there was no observed Iraqi civilian casualties from this operation."
Sort of like the tree falling in the forest. If we didn't see it, it didn't happen.
If a civilian dies in the slums but there was no one there to observe it, did he really die?
But back to the Shiite Zarqawi:
But the news circulating in Baghdad doesn't speak only of those two but is also focuses around a new rising name in the world of militias; that's Abu Diri'.
Abu Diri' (whose first name is believed to be Salim) is a member of the Mehdi Army and gained the nickname which means 'the armor bearer' after he murdered an MNF soldier and seized his body armor during one the Sadrists battles against the MNF.
Ever since that day he wears the body armor and never puts it away. People say this man commands hundreds (or thousands in some accounts) of "former" Mehdi army soldiers.
The story of Abu Diri' describes him as the killer of Sunnis and suggests that his role is confined to doing a 'Shia body count' after each terror attack on Shia areas and then kidnapping and murdering an equal number of Sunnis. Of course the story has different versions and the ratio varies with the level of enthusiasm of the story teller; an objective teller would set the ratio at 1:1 but a sympathizer would raise it to the level of 10 Sunnis in return for each 1 Shia casualty.
A very bad guy, indeed. Probably on his way to Gitmo as we speak.
But it just goes to show that you can kill Zarqawi in one place and he just springs back up somewhere else. Yesterday he was a Jordanian. Today he's a Iraqi Shia. Next week maybe he's a Kurd or a Turkmen.