Fierce clashes between supporters of the militant cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and United States and Iraqi forces in the key city of Najaf on Thursday have threatened to trigger a renewed uprising across southern Iraq.
The fragile peace that has held in the holy city since June was shattered by deadly fighting that began late on Wednesday and continued well into Thursday evening.
It was the heaviest seen in Najaf since al-Sadr instigated an armed uprising among his supporters in April and May.
At least two people were reported killed and eight wounded in Thursday’s battle. A further person was also killed and four wounded when a mortar round hit a hospital.
Al-Sadr’s loyalists claimed to have shot down two US helicopters during the clashes, killing the pilots on board. But US military officials said that only one helicopter had been brought down, and that the pilots had only been injured. They said one American soldier was killed and five were wounded when insurgents attacked a US convoy with a rocket-propelled grenade and small arms fire on the outskirts of the city.
Later, al-Sadr’s camp called for the truce to be restored. The cleric ”announced that we are committed to the truce and that [US] forces must honour the truce,” Sheikh Mahmoud al-Sudani told the Associated Press, adding that if not, the violence would continue.
There were conflicting accounts of what sparked the violence, as each side blamed the other for violating a June ceasefire. But it followed days of mounting tension during which Al- Sadr’s supporters had seized 18 Iraqi police officers in response to the arrest of several of the cleric’s senior aides.
The US military said fighting began late on Wednesday when a police station was attacked by ”a significant number of aggressors”. The statement said the attackers used heavy machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades, mortars and small arms in an assault on the police station around 3am.
Iraqi national guardsmen quickly reinforced Iraqi police, and the two units successfully defended the station from the attackers. Upon the arrival of the marines, the militia fighters withdrew into the city’s exclusion zone, the military said. But aides to al-Sadr countered that Iraqi police and US forces had fired first.
”The situation right now is really unstable. The forces of the US marines, along with the new Iraqi army are trying to break into the old city,” Sheikh Ahmed al-Shaybani, a spokesman for al-Sadr, told The Guardian on Thursday night by telephone from Najaf. ”They tried since midnight yesterday till now, using all kinds of weapons like F-16 jet fighters and Apache helicopters.”
The crackle of gunfire could be heard in the background as he spoke. ”We hold the governor of Najaf [the US-appointed Adnan al-Zurfi] responsible for the violation because he called in the Americans and he wants to enter the old city and eliminate the Al Mahdi army.”
Under the June peace deal, US troops said they would not enter parts of Najaf close to the shrine of the Imam Ali, one of the holiest sites in the Shia faith.
Many Iraqi Shia were outraged when the golden-domed shrine was twice damaged during fighting between US forces and al-Sadr’s fighters in May. Since then the Mahdi guerrillas have controlled access to the sacred site, which in more peaceful times attracts millions of foreign pilgrims.
On Thursday in Najaf, loudspeakers at the shrine called on ”all elements” of the Mahdi army in Iraq to mobilise for ”jihad against the infidel American forces”.
There were reports of new clashes between American troops and al-Sadr’s supporters in the Sadr City district of Baghdad, one of the militant cleric’s main power bases.
Sheikh Shaybani said the Mahdi forces had taken ”complete control of Najaf”, as well as the governor’s buildings in Kut, Amara, Basra, and Diwaniya.
His claims could not be verified, but a Guardian reporter in Basra said the building there appeared peaceful and there were no signs of an occupation.
The prospect of a renewed uprising among al-Sadr’s supporters will add to the pressure on Iraq’s interim government to show it can deliver what many Iraqis say is their top priority — security.
It is already struggling to cope with the almost routine bombings and kidnappings that occur largely in Sunni Arab areas.
Thursday saw another Iraqi police station targeted by a suicide bomber. Six people died and more than 24 were wounded in the town of Mahawil, south of Baghdad, when insurgents detonated a car bomb and sprayed gunfire at the police station.
Sabah Kadhim, an interior ministry spokesperson, said two senior police officers were also shot dead in the town of Musayyib, near Mahawil. – Guardian Unlimited Â