BASRA, Iraq (AFP) — Iraqi troops were in a tense standoff with radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr’s supporters on Friday after they surrounded an office block occupied by the group in the southern city of Basra.

The move was blasted by Sadr’s supporters as a “provocation” but the Iraqi government said the operation only aimed to recover offices unfairly occupied by political groups.

The incident comes only weeks after bloody fighting broke out on March 25 between Iraqi forces and Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia when Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki launched a crackdown on Shiite militiamen in the port city.

The clashes spread to other Shiite regions of Iraq, killing and wounding hundreds of people.

“The police and the army have laid siege to Sadr’s office in Basra,” office head Sheikh Harith al-Athari told AFP. “They have also stopped people from attending Friday prayers.

“The forces, backed by armoured vehicles, have asked us to leave the building,” he added.

Journalists reported Sadr supporters had refused to leave the office block in the oil city, which lies about 550 kilometres (340 miles) south of the capital.

Interior ministry spokesman General Abdel Karim Khalaf told AFP the operation had been approved by Maliki and aimed to “recover official buildings that were being occupied.”

Salah al-Obeidi, a Sadr spokesman from the holy city of Najaf, in central Iraq, said “it is a provocation that will induce people to resort to force.

“The objective of the security forces is to further aggravate tensions and it shows the government’s claims that it is not targeting Sadr supporters to be false,” he added.

Lawmakers from the Sadr political bloc lashed out at Maliki and his government, saying the cleric’s movement was a target of a sustained campaign.

“These are not security operations. There is a hidden political agenda,” said Falah Shanshal.

“It is a move to isolate the Sadr movement from the country’s political process ahead of the elections. They want to weaken the Sadr movement. But the Sadr movement is a belief. It is a national movement.”

In October, Iraq will hold elections in all 18 provinces.

Shanshal said the recent strategies “under the pretext of implementing law” were actually sowing the seeds of hatred.

“You (the government) are destroying relations between the people and the government. You are creating hatred and negative feelings,” Shanshal told AFP during a visit to Sadr City on Friday.

Sadr City has been a site of violent clashes between Shiite militiamen, mostly from Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia, and Iraqi and US forces, since March 25 when Maliki ordered a crackdown in Basra.

Salah al-Ugaili, another Sadrist MP, said 398 people have been killed in the clashes and 1,331 wounded since March 25 in the sprawling impoverished district of eastern Baghdad.

The figures were not independently confirmed. Doctor Wiyam Rashhad, head of Al-Sadr hospital in Sadr City told AFP his facility had registered 135 people killed in the clashes and another 800 wounded.

There are two other hospitals in Sadr City.

Shanshal, however, said the Sadr movement will face this “challenge and participate strongly in the elections.”

“There are militias in the government. They are working to kill the movement. But we will strongly face them.”