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Add an EventIraqi regime launches assault on Basra
One Mahdi Army militiaman, reached by telephone in Baghdad’s Sadr City, told the Christian Science Monitor, “The cease-fire is over; we have been told to fight the Americans.” One official in Sadr’s Basra office, speaking on condition of anonymity, informed a Los Angeles Times reporter, “The Sadr current is threatening to set fire to the oil wells in Basra if the Iraqi military continues its security plan.”
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s government initiated the latest violence by launching a major military campaign early Tuesday morning against Sadr’s forces in Basra, the center of Iraq’s oil industry. While the US media passes along the claim that the assault came in response to clashes in recent days between Iraqi police and army forces and elements of Sadr’s Mahdi Army, the operation, codenamed Saulat al-Fursan (Charge of the Knights), was obviously planned well in advance, with the support or insistence of the American and British military. The New York Times noted in passing that “senior Iraqi officials had been signaling [the operation] for weeks.” As many as 15,000 Iraqi troops are involved.
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It is unclear who currently has the upper hand in Basra 
Basra unrest
So far more than 40 people have died and some 225 have been injured over the two days of clashes in Basra.
Fighting is also continuing in Baghdad, and there have been casualties after rockets were fired at the Green Zone.
Prime Minister Nouri Maliki has given militants 72 hours to lay down their arms or face "severe penalties".
His campaign to "re-impose law" in the city triggered unrest elsewhere in Iraq, and many towns are under curfew.
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