- American forces claimed yesterday to have killed 300
Shia insurgents in Najaf over two days of some of the most intense fighting
since the end of the war against Saddam Hussein's regime 16 months ago.
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- The battle - which raged at its bloodiest in Najaf
but also spread to Shia areas elsewhere in Iraq - marked the shattering
of the fragile truce that two months ago had ended a previous uprising
led by the Shia cleric Muqtada Sadr.
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- No independent corroboration could be made of the
death toll, which was given by the US Marines at their forward operating
base 30 miles outside the Shia holy city. Lt-Col Gary Johnston, operations
officer for the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit, declared: "That is
our estimate; that is our assessment." He did not give any estimate
of civilian casualties.
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- Smoke rose from the old city in the centre of Najaf
after helicopter gunships attacked insurgents said to be hiding in a cemetery
close to the sacred shrine of Imam Ali. Footage on Associated Press Television
News showed roadside stalls burning as shops closed, leaving many streets
deserted. A woman's body was shown abandoned on an empty footpath.
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- The fighting came as the most revered Shia cleric,
the 73-year-old Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, a potentially moderating influence,
was flown to London so a heart condition could be treated. His relatively
infrequent public pronouncements have tended to urge peaceful means towards
achieving change. He was prominent in calling for early elections.
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- US military sources said that two US Marines and
an American soldier had been killed in the fighting, and that 15 soldiers
had been wounded on Thursday and early yesterday during engagements with
insurgents in Baghdad's Shia suburb of Sadr City. The Iraqi Health Ministry
said 19 people had been killed and 111 wounded there.
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- While a spokesman for Sadr denied the US estimate
of the death toll in Najaf - putting it as low as 36 - another official
with the insurgency leader's office in the city said: "The area near
the [Imam Ali] shrine is being subjected to a war. Najaf is being subjected
to total destruction. We call on the Islamic world and the civilised world
to save the city."
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- Each side blames the other for starting the violence.
Both the Iraqi interim government and US forces are adamant that the fighting
started when Sadr's Mehdi Army insurgents attacked a police station in
the early hours of Thursday. Lt-Col Johnston said that the attack was repelled
by Iraqi forces until the insurgents regrouped two hours later. Overwhelmed,
the governor of Najaf had asked for US reinforcements.
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- At first, the fighting had subsided, Lt-Col Johnston
said, but between 7 and 8am another force, "several hundred strong",
had massed in the cemetery. He added: "Some of our forces were down
there still and that is how the situation started escalating."
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- Sadr's spokesmen insist the truce was broken when
US forces surrounded the cleric's home earlier in the week - a claim denied
by senior US officers who say they had not been seeking to detain Sadr,
officially wanted in connection with the murder of a rival cleric.
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- The fighting also spread to the south, and in Nasiriyah
Italian troops came under fire. According to Interior Ministry officials,
eight Iraqis, including five militants, were killed and another 13 were
wounded.
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- Iraq's second city, Basra, under British control,
was also tense. As'ad al-Basri, a spokes-man for the Sadr insurgents, said
that five Mehdi Army members had been killed in engagements with British
troops.
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- In Samarrah, a Sunni stronghold 60 miles north of
Baghdad, a US convoy of 10 Humvees reportedly pulled out under cover of
helicopter fire after coming under attack.
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