BAGHDAD, March 27 (UPI) -- Violence raged around Baghdad and southern Iraq, where confrontations between Iraqi security forces and rebel militia members killed at least 100 people.
In Baghdad, U.S. military officials said terrorists initiated 11 indirect-fire attacks Thursday against civilians, Iraqi security forces and coalition forces, killing one civilian near the Green Zone and injuring 14.
Five mortar rounds struck two joint security stations and a Sons of Iraq citizen security group checkpoint in West Rashid, wounding three Iraqi security volunteers.
Fighting between Iraqi forces and Shiite militia in the southeastern Iraqi city of Kut Thursday killed 42 people and wounded 17, an Iraqi Interior Ministry official told CNN. Since the fighting began Tuesday, more than 100 people have died in Basra, Baghdad, Hilla, Kut and Diwaniya.
U.S. military officials said militants killed two members of the U.S.-backed Sons of Iraq in Salaheddin province.
Fighting in oil-rich Basra and other Shiite regions persisted Thursday between Iraqi security forces and militias such as hard-line Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr and his Mehdi fighters. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who has been overseeing the operation, set a Saturday deadline for militants to surrender their weapons.
About 30 Iraqi militants were killed Wednesday when coalition airplanes and helicopters fired on gunmen in Babylon, an Iraqi security source told KUNA, the Kuwaiti news agency.
U.S. military officials said coalition forces conducted operations in targeting al-Qaida in Iraq suspects near Tikrit.
Forces reportedly exchanged in small arms fire with several suspects in a building later destroyed by coalition aircraft, U.S. officials said Thursday.
Sadr followers protest crackdown
BAGHDAD, March 27 (UPI) -- Supporters of hard-line Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr marched in the streets of Baghdad Thursday to protest a security crackdown against Sadr's militia.
The massive protest came as the Iraqi military imposed a three-day curfew in Baghdad, part of an effort to end fighting between the militia and Iraqi security forces. The curfew bans unauthorized vehicles and pedestrians from the streets from 11 p.m. Thursday to 5 a.m. Sunday, The Washington Post reported.
Demonstrators thronged the Shiite stronghold of Sadr City and the neighborhood of Kazimiyah, the Post said, carrying a coffin decorated with a picture of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.
Maliki ordered Iraqi security units to move against politically backed armed gangs in Basra.
Report: U.S. West warming fastest
LOS ANGELES, March 27 (UPI) -- The U.S. West is warming faster than any other region of the country and faster than Earth in general, researchers say.
In an analysis of 50 scientific studies, the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization and the Natural Resources Defense Counsel concluded that Western states experienced greater warming than the rest of the world from 2003-07, the Los Angeles Times reported Thursday.
During the five-year period studied, the world was on average 1 degree Fahrenheit warmer than its 20th century average, the researchers said. During the same period, 11 Western states were, on average, 1.7 degrees warmer.
The Rocky Mountain Climate Organization is a coalition of local governments, businesses and non-profit organizations.
The report, released Thursday, reflects a "growing consensus among scientists who study the West that climate change is no longer an abstraction," said Brad Udall, director of Western Water Assessment at the University of Colorado.
Udall told the Times that data suggest the West will warm about 1 1/2 times faster than the global average because it features large, arid areas some distance away from slow-warming oceans.
Court orders release of Siegelman
MONTGOMERY, Ala., March 27 (UPI) -- A federal appeals court Thursday ordered that former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman be released from prison on bond while his bribery conviction appeal is heard.
Siegelman was imprisoned immediately after he was sentenced in 2007 to 88 months for exchanging a seat on the state hospital licensing board for a contribution to an education lottery campaign. His lawyers argued that he should not have been incarcerated while he appealed his conviction, The New York Times reported.
In Thursday's ruling, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit in Atlanta found that Siegelman's appeal had raised "substantial questions."
Earlier Thursday, Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee asked the U.S. Justice Department to permit Siegelman to travel to Washington to testify about his prosecution, which Siegelman and others have claimed was motivated by partisan politics.
Fifty-four former state attorneys general, including some Republicans, asked the U.S. Congress in September to investigate Siegelman's conviction. The former prosecutors said the case "may have had sufficient irregularities as to call into question the basic fairness … of our system of justice."
A Republican "opposition researcher" told CBS last month former White House aide Karl Rove asked her in 2001 to get compromising pictures of Siegelman, a Democrat.
