Fighting Intensifies in Iraqi Cities; Toll Rises

Fierce battles between U.S.-led forces and militants loyal to a radical cleric spread Friday, causing a mounting casualty toll and confronting Iraq’s new U.S.-backed interim government with its most serious test yet.

Clashes over the last two days have left scores of people dead, 20 of them in Baghdad alone. U.S. military officials said that as many as 300 militants were killed in the Shiite Muslim holy city of Najaf, where anti-American cleric Muqtada Sadr is based. Sadr’s deputies disputed that figure, estimating that about three dozen members of his Al Mahdi militia had died.

From Najaf, the conflict spread east and south to the cities of Amarah, Nasiriya and Basra and north to Baghdad, where more confrontations erupted in the Sadr City slum and gunfire ricocheted through the Shulla neighborhood, another Shiite stronghold. U.S. troops hastily clamped a dusk-till-dawn curfew on Sadr City on Friday evening.

Further complicating the prospects of calming Shiite-dominated southern Iraq, the country’s senior cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, left Najaf and arrived in London on Friday for treatment of an unspecified heart condition. Sistani, 73, a voice of moderation among Iraq’s Shiite majority, wields great influence.

“We are waiting for an assessment,” Sistani’s representative in London, Jaffar Bassam, said after the cleric arrived with a team of doctors. “We will know what treatment he will need hopefully as soon as the medical team gets to work. Then we can make decisions.”

Sistani was critical of the U.S.-led occupation and has pushed for early, direct elections. But his relatively cautious statements and condemnation of violence have contrasted sharply with Sadr’s confrontational tactics.

In Najaf, where a rain of bullets, rockets, shells and bombs had residents cowering in their homes, Sadr issued a sermon Friday denouncing the U.S. as “the greatest of Satans” and rallying his forces. “The Iraqi president says that America is our friend. I tell you, America is our enemy,” the Al Arabiya satellite TV channel quoted him as saying.

At the same time, his spokesman in Baghdad insisted that Sadr was ready to reinstate a truce that was shattered by the violence that began Thursday.

“There is no need to use force in solving this problem. We want to solve it peacefully,” Sheik Mahmoud Saudany told reporters. But, he warned, “we will not stand idle if we are subjected to an attack.”

Each side blames the other for provoking the renewed combat in Najaf, the heaviest since U.S. forces and Sadr’s Al Mahdi militia negotiated a cease-fire in May. An uneasy peace had prevailed since then, as American troops withdrew from parts of the city and agreed not to operate around the Imam Ali Mosque and another mosque in the nearby city of Kufa.

In the latest surge of hostilities, Army Gen. George W. Casey, the top American military commander in Iraq, said Marines had tightened their cordon around the two houses of worship and concentrated firepower on a sprawling, treeless cemetery beside the Imam Ali Mosque, where militants had taken up positions. U.S. jets dropped satellite-guided bombs on the graveyard Thursday.

“The cemetery is a tough nut to crack because there are caves and a lot of other places to hide,” said Brig. Gen. William Troy, chief of staff for the coalition forces in Iraq.

Buildings were aflame and shops shuttered in Najaf. Gunfire, the drone of helicopter gunships and the explosions of bombs and shells echoed. A boy whose home near the mosque had been hit lay wounded in the street. He died shortly after being brought to a hospital by passersby. By early Friday evening, an official at the Al Hakim hospital counted 13 dead and 48 injured.

The government of interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi called the Iraqi-U.S. operation a “complete success,” saying that “1,200 criminals” had surrendered. But the U.S. military said it expected the fighting to continue through the weekend.

U.S. and Iraqi officials said that outsiders were among the insurgents captured in Najaf, including a large number of convicts who were released by Saddam Hussein shortly before the U.S.-led invasion to oust him began. Some Iraqi officials said that Iranians also have been involved in the fighting.

American commanders have expressed concern that entry points into Najaf have not been properly sealed off, allowing Sadr followers from Amarah, Fallouja and other cities to stream in.

Saudany, Sadr’s spokesman, denied that foreigners took part in the fighting. “Only Iraqis are defending their cities,” he said.

The fledgling Iraqi government, which took power June 28, said it would not deal with armed groups such as Sadr’s and promised to crush the militants.

“This event came at a time to challenge the new government, which has a clear security plan and agenda to put an end to lawlessness and terrorism,” Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari told the BBC.

“This new challenge is very unfortunate, but we are confident and capable to contain it.”

He acknowledged that Iraqi security forces had been unable to control the violence on their own and continued to rely on military aid from the U.S. and other nations.

Some Iraqi analysts say that the Marines, who recently replaced Army units in the area, are more aggressive than their predecessors. But Marine Lt. Col. Gary Johnston, briefing reporters near Najaf, said his troops had come under attack Thursday after helping reinforce Iraqi police in Najaf.

“The Marines are here, and I think you know how they operate,” Johnston said. “If you kill a Marine, the Marines are going to fight back.”

U.S. officials announced three military deaths this morning, bringing the total to more than 920 since the invasion in March 2003.

About 225 miles southeast of Najaf, in Basra, Sadr loyalists battled British troops, firing mortar shells in the morning and rockets at night at a hotel housing British soldiers. Gunfights broke out near Sadr’s office in the city but subsided quickly. “We warn the British troops not to be out on the streets of Basra,” said Sheik Assad Basri, the local Al Mahdi leader. “If they are, their bases all over the city will be under attack.”

In Nasiriya, a southern Iraqi town that had been relatively quiet since the end of major combat last year, six people were killed and 13 injured in fighting between militants and Italian and Iraqi government forces holed up in the police station.

In Amarah, Sadr’s militia overran several police stations, U.S. officials said. British troops backed by tanks were sent in to retake the main facility.

Some of the fiercest fighting occurred in Baghdad districts packed with the disaffected Shiite youths who form the core of Sadr’s support.

Mothers grabbed children off the crater-pocked streets, and roving gangs of armed young militants, in masks and bandannas, braced for an American onslaught in Sadr City. One group commandeered an Iraqi police truck. Others blocked roads or diverted traffic.

“Three shells fell on our street a while ago. I was trying to go to a friend’s house when a shell hit his yard,” a resident said. “There are lots of Mahdi army soldiers here, and I’m afraid they’ll shoot me.”

The Ministry of Health reported that 20 people had been killed in the fighting in Sadr City from early Thursday through Friday afternoon. An additional 114 were wounded.

U.S. forces imposed an 8-p.m.-to-5-a.m. curfew on the slum.

In the Shiite enclave of Shulla, staccato gunfire filled the air Friday afternoon. U.S. troops were called in to back up Iraqi police at a beleaguered station.

Also Friday, four Lebanese truck drivers were reported kidnapped, the latest in a string of abductions that has terrified Iraqis and foreigners alike. And the governor of Anbar province resigned after kidnappers freed his three sons.

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Times staff writers Mark Mazzetti in Baghdad and Janet Stobart in London and correspondents Saif Rasheed and Said Rifai in Baghdad contributed to this report. Special correspondent Othman Ghamin in Basra and a correspondent in Najaf also contributed.