Iraq Shiite militia starts handing in weapons, five killed in attacks

BAGHDAD (AFP) - Radical Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr`s militia slowly began turning in weapons under a deal with the Iraqi government aimed at bringing a halt to months of deadly fighting in a Baghdad slum.
But other anti-American attacks continued, with two US soldiers killed in a rocket attack in Baghdad and two Iraqis and another US soldier killed in a car bomb attack on a US military convoy in the northern city of Mosul.
And armed men claiming to belong to the militant group of Iraq`s most wanted man Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi appeared in a video threatening to behead a Turkish hostage, while another militant group posted a video on the Internet of the beheading of a purported Turkish contractor and a Kurdish translator accused of working with US troops.
In the teeming Sadr City neighbourhood of Baghdad, machine guns, mortar launchers and ammunition were trickling in to police stations under a five-day test agreement that could clear the road for a lasting truce in one of the major flashpoints of the Iraq insurgency.
A durable deal would shore up one flank for US and Iraqi forces in the run-up to national elections planned for January, allowing them to concentrate on Fallujah, the epicenter of the Sunni Muslim insurgency, and other trouble spots in central Iraq.
In Sadr City, police, many of them Sadr supporters, told AFP they thought the militiamen did not trust the Iraqi government or the US military and feared the other side might take advantage of the truce to crush their movement.
Under the terms of the deal, described as a loose verbal pact, there is a five-day test period for the weapons` surrender after which the Iraqi army will move in and patrol Sadr City, where the Shiite militia has ruled by the gun for months.
In return, the government has said it will free some detained Sadr supporters.
Weapons were handed in mostly by intermediaries, in exchange for cash, at one of three police stations serving as drop-off centres that had been cordoned off by police and Iraqi national guard. US troops were also present at the sites.
"If this whole ceasefire falls through, we will be ready to rearm the Mehdi Army," said Hussein Hashim, a courrier for a weapons dealer.
At one station in the heart of the teeming district, dozens of machine guns, mortar rounds and mortar and rocket launchers were handed in.
Sadr City, home to 2.5 million people, has been devastated by six months of fighting between the US army and Sadr`s militia. Intense air strikes and street skirmishes are believed to have sharply reduced the militia`s ranks from more than 10,000 followers to less than 2,000 since April, the US military says.
However, the US battalion commander for Sadr City, Lieutenant-Colonel Gary Volesky, warned that his men reserved the right to carry out raids and arrests despite the five-day test period for Sadr`s men to relinquish heavy and medium weapons.
Elsewhere, two US soldiers were killed and five wounded in a rocket attack in the south of Baghdad, raising the number of soldiers killed in Iraq since the 2003 invasion to 1,067.
In the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, a suicide car bombing struck a US army convoy, killing two Iraqis and one US soldier and wounding 27, hospital sources and the US military said.
The blast rattled the city and blew a five-foot crater in the road, an AFP correspondent said.
Another two Iraqis were killed in a firefight between insurgents and US marines in the rebel hotbed of Ramadi.
Further west in the town of Hit a fierce three-hour battle raged between marines and insurgents who had fired at them from a mosque, said a US military statement, without detailing casualties.
A local hospital said three Iraqis were wounded in the fighting.
In northern Babil province, south of Baghdad, two suspected insurgents were killed and a marine wounded as US troops continued their one-week joint operations with Iraqi forces in the area, said the military.
Meanwhile, an Al-Qaeda-linked group on Monday posted a video on the Internet showing the beheading of two men it identified as a Turkish contractor and an Iraqi Kurdish translator who "confessed" they worked with US forces in Iraq.
Earlier, militants loyal to Zarqawi -- the Jordanian Islamist wanted for a string of deadly attacks and beheadings of hostages in Iraq -- threatened in a video broadcast on Dubai`s Al-Arabiya television to kill another Turkish hostage.
The group demanded the "release of all Iraqi prisoners and the departure of all Turkish nationals from Iraq" and threatened to "behead the hostage in three days if our demands are not met".
On Sunday, another Islamist group announced it had released 10 Turkish hostages after their company pulled out of the country, Al-Jazeera television reported.