Forty-three insurgents were killed in fierce overnight fighting with United States-led coalition forces near Najaf as Spanish troops were completing their withdrawal from the Iraqi holy city, the US-led coalition said on Tuesday.
Fighting broke out late on Monday near Najaf between US troops and Iraqi militiamen loyal to wanted firebrand Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who is holed up inside the city.
Spanish troops based there have completed their withdrawal to Diwaniyah, headquarters for the 1Â 432-strong Spanish contingent, which is due to leave Iraq in the coming days, a military spokesperson said in Madrid.
With US troops facing resistance from both the Shiite and Sunni Muslim communities in Iraq, the coalition was preparing to relieve tensions in the Sunni city of Fallujah with a series of joint patrols instead of a renewed assault on the besieged city.
Patrols had been slated to start on Tuesday in the city, 50km west of Baghdad, after fighting the day before left one US marine and eight insurgents dead. Marines on the ground suggested it would be at least Thursday before the patrols could begin.
US-led coalition forces have been camped outside Najaf for weeks, bottling up al-Sadr who has repeatedly threatened that US forces face suicide bombings if they attack Iraq’s holy cities.
The US has said it will capture or kill al-Sadr, who is wanted for the alleged murder of a rival cleric last year. Al-Sadr has warned that US forces would feel the “fires of hell” if they tried.
The renewed fighting followed the deaths of two members of a unit assigned to hunt for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction at a chemical factory in Baghdad on Monday, a senior US defence official said.
Heavy gunfire and the sound of mortar explosions were heard on Monday night around Kufa about 10km from Najaf, an AFP correspondent reported.
“Forty-three anti-coalition forces were killed and an anti-coalition anti-aircraft system was destroyed” by an AC-130 gunship, the spokesperson said of the clashes at about 9.45pm local time on Monday.
A Najaf hospital official put the preliminary casualty toll at 28 Iraqis dead and 32 others wounded, but with many bodies yet to be retrieved from the battlefield.
A member of al-Sadr’s Mehdi Army told the correspondent the militia had clashed with a US army unit at the northern entrance of Kufa, about 160km south of Baghdad, and on the outskirts of Najaf.
“The clashes … are a provocation, but the red line has still not yet been crossed,” Qais al-Khazaali, a Mehdi Army spokesperson, told Al-Jazeera television.
“To enter Najaf means to pour scorn on the Muslim holy places, whether they are Sunni or Shiite. But we are ready, we are organised and we are coordinated.”
The coalition has claimed that support for al-Sadr was dwindling, but spokesperson Dan Senor described the situation in Najaf as “explosive” and warned militants not to stockpile weapons in mosques, shrines and schools.
Coalition military leaders have also claimed that a core of about 200 foreign fighters are stoking fighting in Fallujah.
However, the claims were rejected in a withering attack on the coalition’s approach in Iraq by 52 former British diplomats in a letter to Prime Minister Tony Blair.
“Heavy weapons unsuited to the task in hand, inflammatory language, the current confrontations in Najaf and Fallujah, all these have built up rather than isolated the opposition,” said the letter.
Estimates of Iraqi dead since the start of the US-led invasion have ranged from 9Â 000 to 15Â 000, with about 720 US troops also killed.
April has proved to be the bloodiest month, with more than 100 troops killed during fighting in hotbeds of Sunni resistance and a series of clashes within the Shiite community.
Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer renewed his attack on Spain over its withdrawal, saying it is “dangerous and ill-conceived” in an article for Tuesday’s Asian Wall Street Journal.
Meanwhile, Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the alleged mastermind of al-Qaeda operations in Iraq, has claimed the suicide bombings on Iraqi southern oil terminals on Saturday that briefly halted oil exports, according to an Islamist website. It was impossible to immediately verify the claim. — Sapa-AFP
Attacks halt rebuilding of Iraq