May 14, 2004
By Suleiman al-Khalidi

NAJAF, Iraq (Reuters) - U.S. forces intensified their war against Iraqi cleric Moqtada al-Sadr Friday, sending tanks into Najaf's vast cemetery to blast guerrilla positions among its ancient tombs for the first time.

Explosions and gunfire rocked the city for hours and there was fighting around the main police station, less than a mile from some of the holiest Shi'ite shrines.

Sadr aides showed journalists three holes in the gilded dome of the Imam Ali mosque, Najaf's most sacred spot, and blamed American shellfire. It was not clear what caused the damage. Dr. Jubayr Awdah Faysal told the Arabic Al-Jazeera television station people arriving injured at the city's general hospital spoke of wounded people lying in the streets and alleged U.S. tanks were stopping ambulances from getting to them.

At least seven U.S. tanks thrust deep into the cemetery, a city within a city covering several square kilometers (miles) where Shi'ites from all over the world wish to be buried within sight of Najaf's sacred shrines.

They blasted suspected positions of Sadr's guerrillas, who have been using the sprawling graveyard to stage hit-and-run attacks on U.S. positions on the edge of town. Clouds of white smoke rose as shells burst among the tombs.

Guerrillas fought back with rocket-propelled grenades and mortars. In Baghdad's Shi'ite Sadr City slum, Imam Abdul Hadi al-Daraji told worshippers; "After the end of prayer you have to go to the holy city of Najaf to support your brothers."

An aide to top Shi'ite Muslim cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani called on both U.S. forces and Sadr's militiamen to cease fighting and leave the holy city.

Ayatollah Mohammad Baqer al-Mohri, a Kuwait-based aide to Sistani, told Reuters the fighting was spreading fast and he feared for the holy sites and for Sistani's life.


"IN AND OUT"

U.S. commanders say they will try not to encroach on holy sites, including the Imam Ali shrine where Sadr has taken sanctuary.

"We describe the holy city as the shrine and the cemetery and today we took some mortar fire from the cemetery and we acted against the mortar fire, very precisely, in and out," Major General Martin Dempsey, commander of U.S. forces in the area, told CNN.

He did not explain why tanks were sent into the cemetery on Friday when mortar attacks from it occur daily.

But U.S. commanders said this week Sadr's "illegal militia" must be disbanded and their patience was wearing thin after more than a month of fighting across southern Iraq.

When fighting died down in the afternoon, some 250 fighters of Sadr's Mehdi Army, some clad in black and most wearing Arab headscarves across their faces, paraded before the Imam Ali mosque chanting "Long live Moqtada!" and displaying ill-assorted pieces of U.S. military hardware.

Sadr himself was able to move out of town and preach his usual weekly service at Kufa, on the outskirts of Najaf.

There were also clashes between U.S.-led forces and the Mehdi Army in nearby Kerbala, another holy Shi'ite city, where U.S. tanks were within one km (less than a mile) of the main shrines.

U.S. helicopters dropped leaflets urging militiamen to give up a day after Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld made a flying visit to Iraq as Washington tried to contain the prisoner abuse scandal.

Rumsfeld said the scandal would not wreck America's mission when he made a surprise visit to Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison where U.S. troops abused and sexually humiliated Iraqis.

The affair has shredded U.S. credibility among Iraqis. Some now question whether U.S. rule is much better than that of Saddam Hussein, who had thousands tortured at Abu Ghraib.

"Like most Americans I was stunned. It was a body blow," said Rumsfeld, who has been fending off calls for his resignation over a crisis threatening President Bush's bid for a second term in November elections.

Some analysts say they are even wondering whether the photographs of prisoners being abused will have the same effect as television pictures of the Vietnam War which eventually turned many Americans against it.

GUILTY PLEA

Rumsfeld, Bush and others have been trying to confine the scandal's damage to the seven military police reservists charged with abuse.

But the Red Cross and others say they warned the Pentagon months ago about systematic abuse in Iraq.

Major U.S. newspapers said the first Abu Ghraib soldier to face trial would plead guilty and tell his court martial in Baghdad next week the abuse was committed without the knowledge of commanders -- a view contradicting defenses being aired by some of Specialist Jeremy Sivits's co-accused.

Denmark's defense ministry, whose troops serve under British command in southern Iraq, said Friday Danish army medics last year saw two prisoners at a British field hospital who had been beaten, one of them to death.

The father of beheaded American civilian Nick Berg added to the pressure on Bush after an Islamist Web site said al Qaeda militants in Iraq executed his son in revenge for the abuses.

"My son died for the sins of George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld. This administration did this," Michael Berg said.

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