400 Mehdi Army militants arrested, al-Maliki says

Story Highlights

• NEW: U.S. aid worker slain Wednesday is identified
• NEW: U.S. says it has hard evidence of Iranian role in militias
• Baghdad violence leaves at least 24 dead

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BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Iraqi authorities say they have been quietly taking a bolder stance against Muqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army militia, and the United States says it has uncovered evidence that Iran is involved in attacks inside Iraq.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said Wednesday that security forces in recent days cracked down on the Mehdi Army, part of a politically powerful Shiite movement thought to be in the middle of the Sunni-Shiite sectarian violence in Iraq.

He said 400 arrests were made.

Al-Maliki has been seen as reluctant to take on the Mehdi Army because support from al-Sadr helped him become prime minister.

President Bush's plan to secure Baghdad and the rest of Iraq depends heavily on Iraqi government action against all insurgent groups. (Watch the destruction of bombs detonated in an al-Sadr stronghold )

Al-Maliki indicated he is taking action.

"Now about 400 of those linked to the Mehdi Army have been arrested over the past few days, and today in Karbala we conducted an operation against a group that assassinated a member of the Karbala provincial council. They have been detained and brought to Baghdad," al-Maliki said.

Al-Maliki said the government had acted against militias in Samawa, Diwaniya and Amara in southern Iraq as well.

"This is really not in response to pressure from anyone or a demand from anyone," he said. "It is simply part of my vision that the state should be the only entity allowed to carry arms."

An official close to al-Maliki, who didn't want to be named, said such activity is being carried out in a circumspect manner. The government doesn't want to enflame Shiite public opinion, so it isn't trumpeting its operations, the anonymous official said.

"The government did strike recently against elements of the Mehdi Army in Samawa but we did not advertise that. We just said that we targeted outlaws," the official said last week.

Samawa is in southern Iraq in Muthanna province, which is largely Shiite, and there had been fighting there in late December that left four police officers dead.

"If the prime minister tells his audience that the government will attack the Mehdi Army then this means starting a war all over southern Iraq," the official said, referring to the fighting in 2004 between U.S. troops and the militia in Najaf and Baghdad.

The official said Iraqis are "most sensitive" to such issues, more so than Americans, when dealing with security matters.

"We do not need to say that to the masses if the goal is to secure Baghdad. It's enough to say publicly that the government will go after all outlaws and those carrying illegal arms," the official said.

U.S. says it has evidence on Iran

Meanwhile, U.S. defense officials say the United States has gathered substantial information and equipment pointing to the involvement of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Al Quds force among Shiite militias.

The militias have been attacking Iraqi civilians and U.S. troops, the officials said.

The evidence was gathered in raids that took place in Irbil earlier this month, and in Baghdad in December.

The United States is still holding 13 people seized in the raids. Others have been returned to Iran. At least two are said by U.S. officials to be senior members of Al Quds -- although it is not clear if those two are still in U.S. custody.

Some of the weapons and weapons components seized had Iranian manufacturing stamps, according to one official. The inventory included mortars, rockets, shoulder-launched weapons and rifles.

Officials are deeply concerned about finding Iranian-manufactured components for advanced improvised explosive devices. The components appear to be used in the armor-penetrating devices that have been used for months now against U.S. troops, the officials said.

Also found in these raids were shipping documents, including addresses inside Iraq, bills of lading, trip logs, videos and maps. One map showed Baghdad neighborhoods and other areas in Iraq marked off by religious affiliation.

Aid worker identified

The National Democratic Institute -- a nonprofit organization that promotes democracy -- Thursday identified its worker killed Wednesday by a roadside bomb as Andrea "Andi" Parhamovich, 28, formerly of New York City and Perry, Ohio.

Three security people -- a Hungarian, a Croatian and an Iraqi -- were also killed in the ambush.

Former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, NDI's chairwoman, said, "There is no more sacred roll of honor than those who have given their last full measure in support of freedom.

"Yesterday, in Iraq, Andrea Parhamovich and our security personnel were enshrined on that list. They did not see themselves as heroes, only people doing a job on behalf of a cause they believed in. They were not the enemies of anyone in Iraq; they were there to help."

Parhamovich was a graduate of Marietta College in southeastern Ohio. She formerly worked for the Massachusetts governor's office and Department of Economic Development, Air America Radio, and the International Republican Institute in Iraq, NDI said

She joined NDI's Baghdad staff in late 2006.

Baghdad violence kills 24

More than half a dozen bombs and a mortar attack rocked Baghdad on Thursday, killing at least 24 people and leaving 67 wounded, according to an interior ministry source.

Four of the bombings were in the southern neighborhood of Dora, the source said. The latest happened in a predominantly Shiite area about 4 p.m. (8 a.m. ET), when a roadside bomb killed a woman and wounded a man.

In western Baghdad around the same time, a car bomb blew up near a police station in the Mashtal neighborhood, killing at least two people and wounding six, an Interior Ministry source says.

Mortars hit a residential area in Adhamiya, a Sunni neighborhood in northern Baghdad, killing four civilians and wounding 13 others.

Hours earlier, three car bombs detonated nearly simultaneously at a popular vegetable market in the Dora district, killing 10 people and wounding 30 others.

Earlier Thursday, a car bomb targeting an Iraqi police patrol exploded in central Baghdad, killing four people and wounding 10 others, an Interior Ministry official said. The casualties were a mix of police and civilians.

Three civilians were killed and seven more were wounded when a parked car exploded in the Camp Sara neighborhood in southeastern Baghdad, an Interior Ministry official said.

Other developments

An Iraqi government spokesman said Thursday that a U.N. report saying 94 civilians are killed every day on average in Iraq is "based on secondhand testimony and sometimes anonymous sources." The latest Human Rights Report of the U.N. Assistance Mission for Iraq stated 34,452 civilians were violently killed in 2006 and 36,685 were wounded. The report said that in November and December, 6,376 civilians were killed, 4,731 of those in Baghdad, most of them shot. It said the killings were "indiscriminate" and "virtually unchecked." (Full story)

The U.S. military said Thursday that U.S.-led coalition soldiers entered and searched the Sudanese Embassy compound in Baghdad Saturday. "The compound was searched as part of an operation aimed at denying insurgents safe haven to carry out attacks against Iraqi security forces and Iraqi citizens," said a statement released by the military.

Explosions and gunfire in Baghdad and the northern city of Kirkuk claimed 35 lives Wednesday. Of those, 10 people were killed at the Kirkuk police station, according to police, and at least 17 died in the Shiite stronghold of Sadr City in Baghdad, according to an Interior Ministry official.

A U.S. sailor died Wednesday in southern Iraq in a "noncombat-related incident," the U.S. military said Thursday. Also, two U.S. soldiers were killed this week in Anbar province, west of Baghdad, the U.S. military said Wednesday. The number of U.S. military personnel who have died in the Iraq war stands at 3,027, according to military reports. There have been 23 deaths so far in January.

CNN's Sam Dagher, Arwa Damon, Susan Garraty and Jomana Karadsheh contributed to this report.