BAGHDAD - After weeks of cooperation with a new security plan, radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr decried U.S. forces as occupiers Friday and called on his followers to "shout 'No, No America!'" in a sign of resurgent anger and opposition.
Thousands of Shiites flooded from the mosque where al-Sadr's statement was read by a preacher at Friday prayers, spilling into the streets of the Sadr City slum to protest the two-week-old American military presence there. The U.S. military says al-Sadr has gone to Iran.
Officials with al-Sadr's Mahdi Army did not explain why al-Sadr chose to issue the surprisingly confrontational statement.
American military leaders had credited al-Sadr - who was said to have ordered his Mahdi Army militia to put away its weapons and not confront U.S. and Iraqi troops - for the relatively effortless start of security patrols and raids in the volatile Shiite slum, a no-go zone for U.S. forces until about two weeks ago.
Al-Sadr's message on the Muslim day of prayer and rest could signal a shift in his willingness to absorb the perceived indignity of the U.S. troop presence and wait out the security plan. Or it could have been nothing more than a reminder to his followers that he was watching carefully and was still their leader. ....
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