Fears were mounting on Sunday night for the safety of three western journalists who have disappeared in Iraq on the road between Baghdad and Najaf, where fierce fighting between United States forces and Shia militiamen continued on Sunday.
Two French journalists, George Malbrunot of Le Figaro and Christian Chesnot of Radio France International, have not been heard of since Thursday, the French foreign ministry said. A third reporter, Italian Enzo Baldoni, has also vanished. The body of his driver was found at the weekend in Najaf, raising fears that he has been kidnapped.
All three journalists had been staying in the same hotel in Baghdad, and were travelling to Najaf to cover the standoff between the US military and the radical Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.
On Sunday intense fighting continued around Najaf’s Imam Ali shrine, where al-Sadr’s Shia militia, the Mehdi army, have resisted more than two weeks of ferocious American bombardment.
Late on Sunday night, US warplanes and helicopters attacked positions in the Old City for the second night running with bombs and gunfire, witnesses said. Militant leaders said the shrine compound’s outer walls were damaged in the attacks.
The US military said it had fired on sites south of the shrine, from which militants were shooting, and did not hit the compound wall, the Associated Press reported.
Diplomatic attempts to re solve the crisis have so far failed.
At the weekend al-Sadr’s aides said they intended to hand the keys of the shrine to Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq’s most respected Shia cleric, who is currently in London. But Sistani’s representatives in Najaf have so far refused to accept them.
On Saturday Sheikh Azhar al-Kenani, one of al-Sadr’s senior officials, admitted that even if Sistani did accept the keys, in a symbolic transfer of responsibility for the shrine, the standoff would probably continue.
”We don’t want people to get killed. But we can’t hand the key to the interim government because they are illegitimate,” he said.
Asked what would happen if US or Iraqi government troops tried to storm the shrine, he replied: ”One hundred percent there will be a massacre.”
There was also fierce fighting at the weekend in the neighbouring town of Kufa, which is under the control of the Mehdi army. US tanks and armoured vehicles raided the town on Saturday.
Mehdi army fighters claim they repulsed the raid and showed off a bloodstained American boot.
On Sunday Iraq’s interior ministry said 40 of al-Sadr’s fighters had been killed in the town. The figure was being treated cautiously.
On Sunday Mehdi army fighters in Kufa said only one comrade had been killed.
”We burned two of their tanks. We’re all fine. We will carry on fighting until we are martyred,” said Sayed Ali (21).
Elsewhere in Iraq, a car bomb exploded on Sunday in the town of Khalis, north of Baghdad, killing two people and injuring 14.
South of the capital two policemen died after insurgents sprayed their vehicle with gunfire. And in the southern city of Basra, the body of an Iraqi intelligence officer kidnapped nearly a week ago turned up riddled with bullets. His kidnappers had said they would execute him if American and Iraqi government forces did not pull out of Najaf.
The latest kidnappings of western journalists temporarily brought the number of reporters missing to four, but a French-American journalist, Micah Garen, who was kidnapped in Iraq more than a week ago, was released on Sunday in the southern city of Nassiriya. All four reporters had been staying in the Duleimi, a budget hotel in Baghdad.
The road between Baghdad and Najaf is notoriously treacherous, especially around Mahmudiya, a Sunni area south of Baghdad and the scene of numerous attacks on US forces. Two Polish journalists were shot dead there this year.
Malbrunot and Chesnot are experienced reporters who had been in Baghdad for a year, and had jointly published a book on Iraq.
The French foreign ministry said on Saturday that its embassy in Baghdad had been ”completely mobilised” but no trace of the two reporters had been found. – Guardian Unlimited Â