A CLEAR rift opened between the Iraqi Prime Minister and the American military yesterday after Nouri al-Maliki lashed out at his allies for raiding the stronghold of a powerful Shia militia.

Mr Al-Maliki’s criticism of the US military as well as his Defence Ministry raised doubts about whether the security forces would have the political backing required to tackle powerful militias beholden to parties in the governing coalition.

The Iraqi leader said that Monday’s raid on Sadr City, a stronghold of the Mahdi Army, which is accused of running death squads, had damaged his efforts to convince political parties to stand down their militias.

American officials have said that the attack, in which airstrikes were carried out on the densely populated Shia slum, targeted a specific cell responsible for murdering Sunnis. When the troops went in, however, they triggered a two-hour battle with Mahdi Army fighters, who run the fiefdom of the hardline cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

Mr al-Maliki, a Shia, said: “I am very sorry for what happened. Such aircraft attacks are unjustifiable on a vulnerable residential area like Sadr City under the pretext of arresting one person.” He promised to pay damages to those wounded in the attack. Mr al-Maliki, who has championed a reconciliation process that he describes as Iraq’s last chance to avoid total collapse, is walking a tightrope between alienating politicians loyal to Mr al-Sadr and allowing militias to terrorise Baghdad.

The cleric’s bloc has 30 seats in parliament, making it one of the most powerful in the Government. “Reconciliation cannot go hand in hand with operations that violate the rights of citizens this way,” Mr Al-Maliki, who insisted that he had not been consulted on the raids, said.

Tackling militias loyal to governing parties risks splitting the Shia coalition and triggering a full-scale uprising such as those by Mr Al-Sadr in 2004, when his Mahdi Army seized the holy city of Najaf and Sadr City. William Patey, the outgoing British Ambassador, gave warning in a leaked e-mail last week that one of the biggest risks was that the Mahdi Army could become a force within a state on a par with Hezbollah in Lebanon.

While Iraqi soldiers, backed by an extra 3,700 American troops drafted into the capital, have sealed off some of the more volatile areas of Baghdad, violence still had not abated yesterday. At least 24 people were killed in a series of bombings and shootings, with another 80 wounded. The worst attack left ten people dead in a central market where the same number were killed in a similar explosion a week ago.

Zalmay Khalilzad, the American Ambassador, gave warning that Iranian forces could be actively stirring up trouble inside Iraq to put pressure on the US for its backing of Israel in its war with Hezbollah.

“Iran . . . has some forces here. There is the possibility that they might encourage those forces to create increased instability here,” he said. It was the first time a senior Western official had explicitly acknowledged the presence of Iranian forces inside Iraq.

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