Top Shi'ite backs call to disband Iraqi militias http://today.reuters.com/news/newsarticle.aspx?type=TopNews&storyID=2006-07-28T102634Z_01_BUL832098_RTRUKOC_0_US-IRAQ-MILITIAS-HAKIM.xml&WTmodLoc=Home-C2-TopNews-TopNews-6
Fri Jul 28, 2006
NAJAF (Reuters) - A top Iraqi Shi'ite politician on Friday backed calls to disband the country's heavily armed militias, which are blamed for inflaming a vicious sectarian conflict that has pushed Iraq to the brink of civil war.
Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (Sciri), commanded a mass rally of his followers "to support the government to solve the issue of militias, and to spread the implementation of law and order."
Sciri is allied with the Badr Organization, one of the most feared militias in Iraq, but is also a key member of the two- month-old government of national unity, led by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.
Maliki has vowed to disarm all armed gangs as part of a strategy to curb the savage insurgency and increasingly brazen sectarian attacks, which now claim 100 Iraqi lives every day.
Hakim also instructed the rally, called to commemorate the anniversary of the 2003 killing in the holy Shi'ite city of his brother Ayatollah Muhammad Baqr al-Hakim, "to stop the series of displacements, killings, kidnappings and sectarianism".
A suspected Shi'ite militia cordoned off an entire Baghdad neighborhood earlier this month, killing everyone they could find with a Sunni name, while attacks against Shi'ites are an almost daily occurrence. At least 27 were killed on Thursday by bombs in a mainly Shi'ite shopping area of central Baghdad.
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