Influential Shiite cleric Moqtada Al-Sadr on Saturday ordered his followers to reject Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki's call to surrender their arms as clashes with troops raged for a fifth straight day. Sadr's orders came as US jets widened the bombing of Basra, dropping two precision-guided bombs on a suspected militia stronghold north of the city, British officials said. Maj. Tom Holloway, a British military spokesman, said US jets dropped the two bombs on a militia position in Qarmat Ali shortly before 12:30 P.M. Haider Al-Jabari of the Sadr movement's political bureau said Sadr “has told us not to surrender our arms except to a state that can throw out the (US) occupation.” On Wednesday, Maliki gave a 72-hour deadline to Shiite fighters, mostly Mahdi Army militants loyal to the anti-American cleric, to disarm in the southern city of Basra after launching a crackdown against them a day earlier. Maliki also raised the stakes in his five-day-old crackdown on Shiite militants, describing his foes as “worse than Al-Qaeda.” The death toll rose as fighting raged in Basra and Baghdad, where US forces have been drawn deeper into a confrontation that started as an Iraqi initiative. US forces said they had killed 48 militants in airstrikes and gun battles across the capital the previous day. At least 133 bodies and 647 wounded have been brought to five hospitals in the eastern half of Baghdad over five days of clashes, the head of the health directorate for eastern Baghdad, Ali Bustan, said. In Basra, government troops say they have killed 120 fighters. Scores of people have been reported killed in other towns across the south where fighting has spread. Clashes erupted in the central city of Karbala where 12 “criminals” were killed, local police chief Raed Jawdat Shakir said, adding that another 25 people were arrested overnight. “We used to talk about Al-Qaeda. Unfortunately it seems there are some among us who are worse than Al-Qaeda,” Maliki said in a televised meeting with tribal leaders in Basra, where he has personally overseen the crackdown since Tuesday. In Baghdad most main roads were deserted on Saturday as the capital remained under curfew for the second day. The Green Zone, seat of the government and the US embassy, again came under mortar bomb or rocket attack, but no information was available on casualties or damage. __
