BAGHDAD (AFP) — Iraqi and US troops detained dozens of people in search operations in two Shiite neighbourhoods of southwest Baghdad on Saturday, witnesses said.
A spokesman for the Shiite radical movement of anti-US cleric Moqtada al-Sadr put the number held at more than 400.
The search operations lasted from 11 am to 2:30 pm (0800 to 1130 GMT) in Al-Amal and the neighbouring district of Al-Bayaa, a stronghold of Sadr's movement, the witnesses said.
"The Iraqi and US forces raided a mosque in Al-Amal as well as a neighbouring market and rounded up dozens of people, some of them elderly men or teenagers," Al-Amal resident, Hazem Mohammed, 27, told AFP.
"My three brothers, one of whom's only 12, were picked up and so was my cousin," Mohammed said, adding that he had only narrowly escaped detention by the Iraqi troops himself.
Several other witnesses interviewed by AFP confirmed the scale of the round-up, carried out as the streets were busy with weekend shoppers.
A Sadr movement spokesman in Al-Amal, Hamadallah al-Rikabi, said: "Iraqi and US soldiers picked up more than 400 people ... including old men and even children."
He said the troops had no arrest warrants for the people they had detained and accused the soldiers of humiliating their detainees.
An army spokesman confirmed that troops had carried out search operations in the two neighbourhoods.
They "arrested wanted suspects and seized several caches of arms and explosives," Qassim Atta told state television.
They carried out their duties with "professionalism", he said, giving no figure for the number of suspects who had been detained.
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