Iraq's Sadr followers reconsidering ceasefire: aide

NAJAF, Iraq (Reuters) - Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army militia might not renew its six-month ceasefire, a key cause of the decline in violence in Iraq, unless attacks against it stop, a Sadr aide said on Saturday.

Salah al-Ubaidi, a senior official in Sadr's political movement in the holy Shi'ite city of Najaf, accused "criminal elements" inside Iraqi security forces of attacking Sadr's followers and Mehdi Army fighters.

"If the government security forces do not stop their campaigns of detention and arresting our followers, we may reconsider our decision to freeze the Mehdi Army," Ubaidi told Reuters.

The six months of the declared ceasefire run out next month.

Sadr announced it after clashes between his followers and police during a pilgrimage in Kerbala, another holy Shi'ite city in southern Iraq, in August.

The fighting, in which scores were killed and hundreds were wounded, sparked outrage and prompted a police investigation. Police this month freed 51 Sadr followers held since the August violence.

Ubaidi, however, said thousands of Sadrists were still being held by the security forces.

"The government must release all of our people who were arrested, especially after the events of Kerbala last year," Ubaidi said.

The firebrand Sadr draws support from poor, urban Shi'ites and led two uprisings against U.S. forces in 2004.

His followers have been locked in a battle for control of southern Iraq and its oil wealth with followers of his main Shi'ite rival, the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, headed by Abdul Aziz al-Hakim.

Sadrists accuse SIIC followers of infiltrating the security forces and attacking them.

Violence across Iraq has fallen 60 percent since June, and U.S. military commanders say the Mehdi Army ceasefire has been crucial to the improvement in security.

Shi'ite militias have been blamed for thousands of sectarian kidnappings and shootings. The bodies of dozens of victims of such killings turned up each day in the streets of Baghdad at the height of the sectarian violence in 2006 and early 2007, but that toll has slowed in recent months to single figures.

The other factors behind falling violence are the deployment of an extra 30,000 U.S. troops, completed in June, and the growing use of mainly Sunni Arab neighborhood police units to drive al Qaeda fighters out of local communities.

(Writing by Paul Tait; editing by Andrew Roche)