US says 300 fighters killed in Najaf battle

8.45am

NAJAF, IRAQ - US marines said on 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.

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.

He said 36 militiamen had died in several Iraqi cities from clashes that have fuelled fears of a new rebellion of radical Shi'ites. By late on Friday, Najaf was quiet, residents said.

The fresh fighting marks a major challenge for US-backed Prime Minister Iyad Allawi and appears to have destroyed a two-month-old ceasefire between US forces and Sadr's Mehdi militia.

"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, 160 km (100 miles) south of Baghdad.

"The marines are here and I think you know how they operate. If you kill a marine, the marines are going to fight back."

Johnston said two marines had been killed and 12 wounded.

He told reporters that the Mehdi fighters were badly co-ordinated 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.

US military officials said there were indications that foreign fighters had joined the militia.

The US-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 US officials said fighting escalated when marines came to the aid of badly outgunned Iraqi police who were attacked by insurgents wielding heavy weapons early on Thursday.

Colonel Anthony Haslam, the marine base commander and chief of operations in Najaf, estimated the number of Mehdi fighters at more than 2000.

The US 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 on Thursday, while in Nassiriya six were dead and 13 wounded.

The Italian military said it had reached a ceasefire 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 US troops killed.

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."

Colonel Haslam said he had heard nothing of the offer.

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.

In a worrying move for his followers, Sistani, a 73-year-old Iranian-born cleric, flew to London on Friday for treatment for a heart problem, sources said.

- REUTERS

Herald Feature: Iraq