Iraq:US and Iraqi forces detained a deputy health minister yesterday, a senior member of the political group of radical Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, in the first major sign that a security crackdown in Baghdad was under way.
Ministry officials and witnesses said deputy health minister Hakim al-Zamili was detained during the raid by US and Iraqi forces on the health ministry in Baghdad.
"He is suspected of funding rogue JAM through large-scale employment of militia members," a US military statement said, using the US military's acronym for the militia.
In an attack that bore the hallmarks of the sectarian killings that the crackdown aims to address, gunmen shot dead 14 men from the same Sunni family in a massacre north of Baghdad yesterday, after storming two neighbouring homes and separating the men from the women and children, police said.
The detention of Mr Zamili came a day after the US military said the long-awaited Baghdad offensive - seen as a final attempt to halt Iraq's slide toward all-out civil war - had begun.
An official in Mr Sadr's political movement accused the US military of trying to provoke a confrontation and urged the Iraqi government to take immediate action to free the official.
Some Shia sources said Mr Zamili was a suspect in kidnappings, including an abduction of ministry colleagues. The US military said the arrested man was implicated in kidnappings and the death of a health official.
Iraqi and US forces have seized or killed hundreds of Mr Sadr's followers in recent weeks.
South of Baghdad, a car bomb killed 17 people in a market in a mainly Shia town and US forces killed 13 insurgents in an air strike on two suspected foreign fighter safe houses west of the capital. A car bomb killed six people in Baghdad.
President Bush has committed 17,500 more troops to the Baghdad push, announced by Mr Maliki a month ago. US officials yesterday said a helicopter operated by a private security firm had come down in Iraq last week - the sixth helicopter crash in three weeks. The US military also announced the deaths of four Marines killed in combat in western Anbar province.
The UN human rights chief meanwhile has filed an unprecedented legal challenge with Iraq's highest court against a possible death sentence for one of Saddam Hussein's former deputies.
Louise Arbour, the UN high commissioner for human rights, said killing Taha Yassin Ramadan would be illegal because the death penalty can only be imposed if trial and appeal procedures meet international standards. Mr Ramadan's life sentence for the killings of 148 Shias in 1982 is currently being appealed at the Iraqi High Tribunal and could be changed to death by hanging.
Ms Arbor said capital punishment would amount to "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment", which is prohibited under international law. - (Reuters)