BAGHDAD, June 23, 2018 (News Wires) - Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, whose political bloc came third in a May parliamentary election, met on Saturday with cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, whose bloc came first, in the Shi'ite holy city of Najaf, Abadi's office said. Meanwhile, Al-Abadi warned Saturday that he would not allow militias to stockpile arms, two weeks after a weapons depot belonging to an armed group exploded in Baghdad. At least 16 people were killed and around 30 injured when the cache, owned by a group close to populist cleric Moqtada Sadr, blew up in his stronghold of Sadr City on June 7. "There are groups who have taken advantage of the war against (the Islamic State group) to stock up weapons in order to threaten the state," Abadi said at a conference at Baghdad's Defence University for Military Studies. "They wanted to be stronger than the state in order to blackmail civilians," he said. "This we will not allow."
