Cleric's remarks stoke rivalry between Shiites

BAGHDAD — The deaths of seven U.S. troops were confirmed Friday, and a leading Shiite Muslim cleric launched a new round of finger-pointing over who was to blame for recent violence among rival Shiite factions in Iraq. Military officials said four Marines died Thursday during combat in the western province of Anbar, which President Bush visited Monday and singled out as the region where the U.S. troop buildup this year had slowed the violence.

The other three troop deaths also occurred Thursday, in Nineveh province, when military vehicles struck explosives, U.S. officials said.

The names of the dead were withheld pending notification of their families. The report brings the number of U.S. military deaths to 3,760 since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, according to icasualties.org, which tracks troop deaths.

Far more Iraqi civilians and security forces have died in the warfare, and an influential Shiite cleric and member of Iraq's parliament on Friday blamed Shiite rivalries for some of the latest bloodshed that has made political stability here next to impossible.

"The truth is that there is a flaw among us that has sparked the crisis, that has caused the disaster," Sheik Jalaluddin Saghir said during a sermon. "And, yes, the Sunni extremists are gloating over it."

Though most of the violence in Iraq over the years has taken place between Sunni and Shiite Muslims, the number of killings between two major Shiite militias has grown in the last months.

The bloodshed has hampered efforts to achieve political progress sought by the U.S. during the troop buildup that began in February. Congressional hearings on the results of the military "surge" are to begin Monday.

Last month, 52 people died and 300 were injured during gunfights between Shiite militias in the holy city of Karbala, where a million Shiites had gone on an annual pilgrimage. The violence broke out Aug. 28 between Mahdi Army members loyal to anti-American cleric Muqtada Sadr and the Badr Organization, the armed wing of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council.

The Sadr and Badr groups have battled for control of Iraq's oil-rich south through increasingly bloody rounds of killings and reprisals as British troops have been departing.

The Badr group holds the edge in political and military power. But Sadr militia members have infiltrated police and Iraqi army units and also control a growing number of Baghdad neighborhoods outside their base in the capital's Sadr City district.