On Sunday evening Karim al-Zuheiri was watching Iraq’s footballers play Australia at the Olympics. There had been no power for weeks in Najaf’s old city where he lives; and so — ignoring the shellfire from the nearby Imam Ali shrine — Zuheiri hooked up his television to a car battery.
He and four friends were on the pavement watching the first half when they heard several shots. ”We realised an American sniper was shooting at us,” Zuheiri said on Monday. ”We ran inside like gazelles. By the grace of God we got the TV set back on in time to see Iraq score. With the goal we forgot some of our sadness and pain.”
For the past three weeks the dusty alleyway where Zuheiri lives has been transformed into a war zone. The road is 500 metres south of Najaf’s golden-domed shrine, where the rebel Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr’s militia have been holding out against the United States army.
To get to the shrine you have to go past Zuheiri’s terraced corner house, across a shot-up boulevard and through a dense network of small lanes. From there it is a sprint left to the shrine’s gateway, opposite Najaf’s souk.
”If you walk 20 metres beyond my house you are at the frontline,” Zuheiri said.
In the past two days US tanks have advanced further towards the shrine than ever before, encircling the south and east of the complex. They already control the west, and have been pulverising the Wadi al-Salam cemetery to the north.
On Monday night, smoke rose above the Old City within a kilometre of the shrine. Shrapnel fell in the courtyard of the gold-domed mosque, whose outer walls have already been damaged.
Given their superiority, Zuheiri said on Monday he could not understand why the US military had not yet finished the job. ”It took them nine or 10 days to invade Iraq and get rid of Saddam Hussein,” he said. ”Why can’t they get rid of Moqtada?”
But with the battle for Najaf entering a stage of bloody attrition, life for the civilians caught in the middle has become intolerable.
Five days ago, a US tank pulled up outside the house of Yassir al-Abayechi, one of Zuheiri’s neighbours, whose home is now on the wrong side of the frontline.
”The tank suddenly appeared,” said Abayechi, a 22-year-old student. ”The American soldier in it started shouting, ‘Go, go.’ I understand a few words of English so I grabbed my stuff and ran. I took my mother, sister and brother. We haven’t been back.”
Abayechi was bitterly critical of all sides: ”If I step out of my house I get killed in a mortar attack. If I criticise the Mehdi army they will kill me. If I attack the interim government they will kill me. And if I attack the Americans they will kill me as well.”
He said that Saddam had arrested and executed his father and uncle in 1985, but that life under his regime was preferable to the current situation: ”Under Saddam we were living in a big prison, but there was security. Now they claim we have democracy, but what is the point of that if we don’t have security?” he asked.
At least 52 civilians have been killed and 223 wounded in Najaf since al-Sadr launched his latest uprising. Zuheiri said an old woman living a few doors away had been one of the victims.
”An American sniper shot her in the chest and stomach,” he said. ”It was impossible to get her to hospital. She died. We, the people of Najaf, are the victims of all this.”
Civilians in Najaf’s old city have had no water or electricity since the fighting began. They have had no ration cards for two months, and are running out of food.
While we were sitting in Zuheiri’s sweltering front room, a group of Mehdi army fighters knocked on the door, demanding to know who we were. Several minutes later an American tank rumbled past.
When someone is killed, residents say it is not always easy to know who to blame.
The night bombings by US jets are terrifying, they say. ”We didn’t sleep,” said Zuheiri, who teaches at the local primary school.
Soon after midnight on Monday a US warplane pounded the city again. Artillery exchanges continued until the fighting eased at 8am.
By lunchtime the mortars had started again, crashing into Najaf’s cemetery.
”We don’t want a bloodbath in the holy city,” said one of Zuheiri’s relatives, Sabar al-Zuheiri. ”We call on the Islamic world to intervene.”
And what about the Olympics? Could Iraq’s football team surprise the world and win the gold medal after its 1-0 victory over Australia?
”I don’t think so,” Zuheiri said. – Guardian Unlimited Â