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300 fighters killed in najaf battle Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
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U.S. Says 300 Fighters Killed in Najaf Battle
Fri Aug 6, 2004 02:48 PM ET
By Khaled Farhan
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.
A spokesman for 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 died in several Iraqi cities from clashes that have fueled fears of a new rebellion of radical Shi'ites.
The fresh fighting, which still raged Friday, 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.
"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.
"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 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.
GOVERNOR ORDERS MILITIA OUT
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 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.
Iraq's interim government expressed confidence it could deal with the crisis. It is already grappling with a spate of car bombings, assassinations and kidnappings of foreign hostages.
"We have every confidence in our new government, our security forces and our allies to contain this conflict," Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari said.
In the previous uprising, hundreds of Iraqis and dozens of U.S. troops were killed.
TRUCE OFFER?
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 Friday for treatment for a heart problem, sources said.
U.S. Marines recently replaced the U.S. Army in Najaf and analysts have suggested the upsurge in violence is linked to the Marines taking a more aggressive approach with Sadr's militia.
At the same time, attempts by the interim government to draw Sadr into the mainstream appear to have faltered, which may have prompted the cleric to redouble his militant approach.
(Additional reporting by Michael Georgy, Nadim Ladki, Matthew Green and Luke Baker in Baghdad)
(graphic available at http:www.picturedesk.reuters.com/IRAQ_06AUG04)
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