{"id":1223,"date":"2004-08-05T12:23:14","date_gmt":"2004-08-05T19:23:14","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2004-08-05T12:23:14","modified_gmt":"2004-08-05T19:23:14","slug":"mahdi-army-declares-holy-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2004\/08\/05\/mahdi-army-declares-holy-war\/","title":{"rendered":"Mahdi Army declares holy war"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/ancapistan.typepad.com\/unfairwitness\/images\/najafhelicopter.html\" onclick=\"window.open('http:\/\/ancapistan.typepad.com\/unfairwitness\/images\/najafhelicopter.html','popup','width=640,height=480,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0'); return false\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"najafhelicopter\" src=\"http:\/\/ancapistan.typepad.com\/unfairwitness\/images\/najafhelicopter-thumb.jpg\" width=\"200\" height=\"150\" border=\"0\" style=\"float: right; margin: 0px 0px 5px 5px;\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><i>&#8220;We will wage jihad and war against the foreign troops, not against police and Iraqi forces,&#8221; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sky.com\/skynews\/article\/0,,30200-1146484,00.html\" target=\"_blank\">said Sheikh Saad al-Basri<\/a>, al-Sadr&#8217;s representative in the largely Shi&#8217;ite city.    [Basrah]<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;However, if Iraqi personnel fight on the side of the occupiers, we will strike them harshly.&#8221; <\/i>    <\/p>\n<blockquote><p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.turnto10.com\/news\/3618791\/detail.html\" target=\"_blank\">The fiercest fighting in weeks is under way<\/a> in the Iraqi city of Najaf &#8212; where a U.S. helicopter has been hit.<\/p>\n<p>The chopper went down and injured crew members have been evacuated. A military spokesman says no one was killed in the crash &#8212; but the crew suffered injuries. The number of wounded is not known yet.<\/p>\n<p>The battles between cleric Muqtada al-Sadr&#8217;s Mahdi Army and U.S.-Iraqi forces have killed two people.<\/p>\n<p>Officials say the helicopter went down as Shiite militiamen fought Iraqi and U.S. forces. Health Ministry officials say at least eight people were wounded in the clashes.<\/p>\n<p>Officials say Muqtada al-Sadr&#8217;s Mahdi Army sparked the fighting by attacking a police station with mortars, rocket-propelled grenades and gunfire.<\/p>\n<p>Residents say U.S. Marines joined the fight to help police.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;We will wage jihad and war against the foreign troops, not against police and Iraqi forces,&#8221; said Sheikh Saad al-Basri, al-Sadr&#8217;s representative in the largely Shi&#8217;ite city. [Basrah] &#8220;However, if Iraqi personnel fight on the side of the occupiers, we will strike them harshly.&#8221; The fiercest fighting in weeks is under way in the Iraqi [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[676],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-1223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-antiwar-movement"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1223","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1223"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1223\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1223"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=1223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}