- NAJAF, Iraq (AFP) -- Moqtada
Sadr ordered his Mehdi Army to continue their war against US and Iraqi
forces after the militia besieged in a holy shrine were pounded by the
heaviest bombardment yet in their 16-day standoff.
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- The Shiite Muslim cleric's defiant call, delivered as
usual via a spokesman, followed a letter circulated late Thursday in which
he refused to disarm in the wake of a "final" warning to surrender
from Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi.
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- Nevertheless, spokesman Sheikh Ahmed al-Shaibani also
said the militia was ready to hand over control of Najaf's Imam Ali mausoleum
to the highest Shiite religious authority in Iraq. But there seemed to
be a catch.
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- "Moqtada Sadr has asked his fighters to continue
the fight," Shaibani told AFP at the Imam Ali, one of the holiest
Shiite pilgrimage sites in the world, which the cleric's militia seized
on April 5 after Sadr began his rebellion.
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- "The Mehdi Army is ready to leave the mausoleum
and hand over the keys to the leaders of the Marjaiya, Ali Sistani and
Kazem al-Haeri, but unfortunately they are not here," said Shaibani.
-
- Although Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the spiritual
leader of Iraq's majority Shiite population, has left a London hospital
following treatment for a heart condition, he is understood to still be
in Britain.
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- Haeri is based in the Iranian holy city of Qom.
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- Deafening explosions engulfed central Najaf after nightfall,
as guns fired, US helicopters and warplanes screeched overhead and smoke
filled the sky above the Old City, at the heart of which lies the Imam
Ali shrine.
-
- An AFP correspondent said the bombardment was the heaviest
since the fighting began on August 5 after the collapse of an earlier truce.
-
- But after dawn broke, an eerie calm settled on Najaf,
where at least 3,800 US and Iraqi government troops are facing an estimated
1,000 militia.
-
- Repeating the contents of Sadr's alleged Thursday letter,
Shaibani said the Mehdi Army would not be disarmed "because we don't
have the right to do so."
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- "This is the army of Imam Mehdi," he said,
referring to the so-called 12th imam, who Shiites believe one day will
return to this world.
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- Shaibani dismissed Allawi's call for the Mehdi Army to
disarm, quit the shrine and enter politics or face military defeat, as
threats dictated by US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and a "government
ordered by the Americans".
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- In the main southern city of Basra, the British military
said the number of security guards around key oil infrastructure had been
stepped up after the Mehdi Army torched the offices and warehosues of the
South Oil Company.
-
- "The fire at the South Oil Company has been dealt
with and there is no effect on oil production. The number of security guards
around the oil infrastructure has also been increased," a spokeswoman
said.
-
- A policeman responsible for security at the governorate
building in the southern city of Amara said the nearby British base was
mortared continuously overnight.
-
- However, British military spokesmen insisted that the
number of sporadic small arms fire and mortar attacks, improperly launched
and inaccurate, across their patrol region were less than in recent weeks.
-
- Meanwhile, the US military confirmed that a three-day
offensive operation, in league with Iraqi security forces, was continuing
in Sadr's Baghdad bastion, the sprawling slum neighbourhood of Sadr City.
-
- The health ministry said 10 people had been killed and
79 wounded in the 24 hours to Friday morning. Two US soldiers have been
killed and another two wounded since the operation began on Wednesday.
-
- In what is one of the most depressed areas of the Iraqi
capital, the US military have slammed militia attacks, "intimidation"
and "threats" for delaying multi-million dollar reconstruction
projects in the area.
-
- An AFP photographer said US tanks were parked in the
centre of the slum and that armoured vehicles had blocked off the three
main streets leading into the district, ahead of the main weekly Friday
prayers.
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- West of Baghdad, two Iraqis were killed and 11 others
wounded, including three women and a child, in a double US airstrike on
the Sunni Muslim stronghold of Fallujah, a doctor said Friday.
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- Both strikes, one overnight and one Friday morning, pounded
the city's industrial zone, said a doctor at the Fallujah general hospital.
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- A US military spokesman said the airstrikes were ordered
to take out two anti-aircraft guns and protect US air assets.
-
- A local pipeline linking the main northern Iraqi oilfields
of Kirkuk to the Baiji refinery was also damaged when a makeshift bomb
exploded, hampering oil distribution, said a fire fighter attached to the
North Oil Company.
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