Moqtada al-Sadr escaped an assassination attempt this morning in Baghdad:

A mortar attack hit the compound of Moqtada al-Sadr, the powerful Shiite cleric and militia leader on Sunday, injuring one guard and a child, a top Sadr aide said. Sadr was inside his house at the time of the attack but escaped injury, aide Mostafa Yacoubi said.

Two 82mm mortar rounds hit the Shiite cleric's compound, which is in a neighborhood controlled by Sadr's forces in the northeast of the Shiite holy city of Najaf.

One round struck by the front gate, injuring the guard and a neighborhood child, Yacoubi said. Yacoubi gave no details of any casualties inside Sadr's house, except to say Sadr was not wounded.

The mortar got launched from a neighboring house; apparently the neighborhood isn't entirely pleased with Sadr and his Mahdi militia. Sadr issued a statement calling for calm and restraint from revenge, advice which if he himself had heeded it probably would have kept the mortars from falling on his house today.

Perhaps he learned a lesson today, but I rather doubt it.

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» Fire Fight in Baghdad from Blue Star Chronicles
News reports of a firefight in Baghdad currently underway.   ABC News:   Abdul-Zahra al-Suaidi, head of al-Sadr’s office in Baghdad, said U.S. forces and Iraqi soldiers opened fire at the al-Moustafa Shiite mosque in the Ur neighborhood, killin... [Read More]

Tracked on March 27, 2006 1:37 AM