A roadside bomb exploded near a convoy carrying Iraqi generals in a Shiite militia stronghold in the southern city of Basra yesterday, but the officials were unhurt, one of the officers said.
Major-General Mohammed al-Askari, spokesman for Iraq's Defence Ministry, said he was in a convoy with Basra's security chief, Lieutenant-General Mohan al-Firaiji, when the blast went off in the Hayaniya neighborhood.
The neighborhood is a stronghold of the Mehdi Army militia of cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and was the scene of major clashes last week between security forces and militiamen.
"It was a roadside bomb. It exploded near our vehicles but nothing happened to myself or Firaiji," Askari said after the blast.
An Iraqi television correspondent was wounded in the leg, Askari said, adding that he might have been hit by a bullet.
There were reports of sporadic clashes in Basra yesterday, but Askari denied there had been any fresh fighting.
Hundreds of people were killed and many more wounded in last week's fighting after Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki ordered a crackdown on Shiite militiamen in Basra. Sadr ordered his fighters off the streets on Sunday.
One witness said he had earlier heard Iraqi army loudspeakers ordering people to close their shops and to stay at home in Hayaniya. He then heard explosions and gunfire.
Overall though, Basra was relatively calm for a third straight day yesterday.
Many experts say the crackdown backfired by exposing the army's weakness and reinforcing Sadr's support base. During the fighting, the defense minister acknowledged his troops were surprised by the ferocity of the militia resistance.
Maliki on Tuesday declared the military operation a success.
Meanwhile, a senior US senator said on Tuesday that the Iraqi government's failure to wipe out the Mehdi Army may leave the group stronger in the long run.
Senator Joseph Biden, chairman of the powerful Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, told reporters on a conference call that despite Maliki's crackdown, Shiite cleric Sadr "lives to fight another day."
"One of the things that concerns me is that this is a little bit like what happened to Hezbollah in Lebanon [in 2006] ... the Israelis used full force that they had in Lebanon and Hezbollah survived and they grew in strength as a consequence," he said. "Here, Maliki says he's going down and he's going to take out all these malcontents, as well as take out Sadr and his Mehdi Army. And it looks to me like, at least on the surface, Sadr may have come out a winner here. You know, he lives to fight another day."
Biden said "there's a lot more to learn" about the ceasefire and whether there was "any serious damage done" to the central government or to Sadr.
He said he had not been briefed on the situation by the US government, but believed "we did not play a very major role in negotiating the ceasefire and there's some reason to believe that that may very well have occurred in Iran through the Iranians."
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