- NAJAF, Iraq (Reuters) --
U.S. Marines said Friday they had killed 300 fighters loyal to a firebrand
Iraqi Shi'ite cleric in fierce clashes that pose a stern test for an interim
government struggling to stamp its authority over the country.
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- A spokesman for Muslim cleric Moqtada al-Sadr denied
that many fighters had been killed in the holy city of Najaf in the past
two days.
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- He said 36 militiamen had died in several Iraqi cities
from clashes that have fueled fears of a new rebellion of radical Shi'ites.
By late Friday, Najaf was quiet, residents said.
-
- The fresh fighting marks a major challenge for U.S.-backed
Prime Minister Iyad Allawi and appears to have destroyed a two-month-old
cease-fire between U.S. forces and Sadr's Mehdi militia.
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- "The number of enemy casualties is 300 KIA (killed
in action)," Lieutenant Colonel Gary Johnston, operations officer
for the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit, said at a military base near the
city, 100 miles south of Baghdad.
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- "The Marines are here and I think you know how they
operate. If you kill a marine, the Marines are going to fight back."
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- Johnston said two Marines had been killed and 12 wounded.
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- He told reporters that the Mehdi fighters were badly
coordinated and shot at random against the heavily armed Marines who were
backed up by F-16 fighter jets, AC-130 gunships and helicopters.
-
- Much of the fighting took place around the mausoleums
and small caves of Najaf's ancient Shi'ite cemetery, the largest in the
Arab world and a popular sanctuary for Mehdi fighters.
-
- In Najaf's streets, market stalls burned as ordinary
Iraqis cowered in their homes. Thick black smoke rose over the city.
-
- Despite the marine onslaught, hundreds of Mehdi militia
carrying AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades roamed the city near Najaf's
shrines, some of the holiest in Shi'ite Islam.
-
- Gunfire damaged the dome of the Imam Ali shrine, some
said.
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- GOVERNOR ORDERS MILITIA OUT
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- U.S. military officials said there were indications that
foreign fighters had joined the militia.
-
- The U.S.-appointed governor of Najaf put the militia
death toll at 400, with 1,000 captured. He said he had information 80 Iranians
were fighting alongside Sadr's militia, whom he ordered to leave the city
in 24 hours.
-
- Sheikh Raed al-Qathimi, a spokesman for Sadr, rebuffed
the American version of the death toll.
-
- "I categorically deny these American lies,"
he said.
-
- Tension had been rising in Najaf since Iraqi security
forces surrounded Sadr's house earlier this week.
-
- But U.S. officials said fighting escalated when Marines
came to the aid of badly outgunned Iraqi police who were attacked by insurgents
wielding heavy weapons early Thursday.
-
- Colonel Anthony Haslam, the Marine base commander and
chief of operations in Najaf, estimated the number of Mehdi fighters at
more than 2,000.
-
- The U.S. military added it was not pursuing Sadr.
-
- British and Italian troops also fought the Mehdi militia
across Shi'ite-dominated southern Iraq -- in Basra, Amara and Nassiriya
-- while fighting raged in Sadr City and Shoula, two Shi'ite districts
of Baghdad.
-
- The Health Ministry said fighting in Sadr City alone
had killed 20 Iraqis and wounded 114 since early Thursday, while in Nassiriya
six were dead and 13 wounded.
-
- The Italian military said it had reached a cease-fire
agreement with Mehdi militants in Nassiriya, using the governor of Dhi
Qar Sabri province, Hamid al Rumayad, as an intermediary.
-
- Ettore Sarli, spokesman for the Italians in Nassiriya,
said al Rumayad asked Italian troops to move behind their lines to allow
the Sadr militants to leave the city. Sarli told Reuters by telephone:"
At the moment we are waiting for the militants to respect the accord, seeing
as how it was them who requested it."
-
- The flare-up of tension with radical members of Iraq's
majority community comes after Shi'ite militants rose up across south and
central Iraq in April and May with hundreds of Iraqis and dozens of U.S.
troops killed.
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- TRUCE OFFER?
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- Yet Sadr, a young cleric with an ardent following among
poor, disaffected youths, appeared keen to stop the latest fighting. Via
another spokesman in Baghdad, he called for a resumption of a truce struck
in June.
-
- "We have no objections to entering negotiations
to solve this crisis," Mahmoud al-Sudani told reporters. "As
I have said in the name of Sayed Sadr, we want a resumption of the truce."
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- Colonel Haslam said he had heard nothing of the offer.
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- While Sadr may be popular with frustrated young Shi'ites,
many of Iraq's mainstream community follow Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the
most influential Shi'ite cleric in Iraq who has carefully and quietly tried
to keep a lid on Sadr's agitating.
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- In a worrying move for his followers, Sistani, a 73-year-old
Iranian-born cleric, flew to London Friday for treatment for a heart problem,
sources said.
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- - Additional reporting by Michael Georgy, Nadim Ladki,
Matthew Green and Luke Baker in Baghdad
-
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