Helicopters pound cemetery

US helicopter gunships opened fire on Shiite militants hiding in Najaf’s massive cemetery today as US patrols armed with speakers warned the militants to leave the city immediately or face death.

US tanks drove into the cemetery, explosions shook the streets and black smoke rose over parts of the city, but the fighting with militant Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia appeared more sporadic than in recent days.

A large fire broke out at a hotel about 300 metres from the Imam Ali Shrine, Najaf’s holiest site, which fighters have reportedly been using as a base.

Witnesses said insurgents were firing from inside the hotel, when US forces returned fire.

In a new tactic to try to quell the violence, US military vehicles equipped with loudspeakers drove through the streets warning residents to stay away from the fighting and for militants to put down their weapons and leave Najaf or else they would be killed.

"We ask residents to cooperate with the Iraqi army and police," said a voice in Arabic through a loudspeaker. "There will be no truce or negotiations with terrorists."

Small clashes also broke out in the Baghdad Shiite neighbourhood of Sadr City, despite a night-time curfew that was imposed yesterday.

Mahdi Army militants have been targeting US patrols with gunfire and they have tried to set up roadblocks in the neighbourhood, but US forces tore them down, said US Captain Brian O’Malley of the 1st Brigade Combat Team. There were no US casualties, he said.

While US and Iraqi forces were trying to quell the eruption of Shiite violence, attacks by Sunni Muslim militants persisted.

A roadside bomb detonated as a US military vehicle drove on a street in central Baghdad today, slightly injuring two soldiers, the military said. Yesterday a suicide car bombing targeting a deputy governor killed six people, and a roadside bomb hit a bus, killing four passengers.

Another insurgent group also warned in a videotaped message it would launch a campaign of attacks on government offices in Baghdad starting today, telling employees to stay away.

The sixth day of Shiite violence came after al-Sadr warned yesterday that he would fight "until the last drop of my blood has been spilled."

The uprising began to affect Iraq’s crucial oil industry, as pumping to the southern port of Basra - the country’s main export outlet - was halted because of militant threats to infrastructure, an official with the South Oil Company said yesterday.

About 1.8 million barrels per day, or 90 per cent of Iraq’s exports, move through Basra, and any shutdown in the flow of Iraq’s main money earner would badly hamper reconstruction efforts. Iraq’s other export line - from the north to Turkey - is already out of operation.

Clashes intensified around Basra, where a British soldier was killed and several others wounded in fighting with militia near the cleric’s office yesterday, the British Ministry of Defence said. Three militants were killed and more than 10 others wounded, a senior Iraqi police official said.

US President George W Bush said yesterday that coalition forces were "making pretty good progress about stabilising Najaf."

Much of the fighting in Najaf remained centred on the vast cemetery near the Imam Ali Shrine. The US military said Mahdi Army gunmen were launching attacks from the cemetery and then running to take refuge in the shrine compound, one of the holiest sites in Shia Islam.

Najaf Governor Adnan al-Zarfi gave US forces approval to enter the shrine, a senior US military official said yesterday. "We have elected at this point not to conduct operations there, although we are prepared to do so at a moment’s notice," the official said.

Such an offensive would almost certainly cause widespread outrage among the nation’s Shiite majority and further exacerbate the crisis.

The military official estimated that 360 insurgents were killed between Thursday, when fighting began, and Sunday night, a figure the militants dispute. Five US troops have been killed in the fighting. About 20 police also have been killed, Najaf police chief Brigadier Ghalib al-Jazaari said.

The fighting has shattered a series of delicate truces worked out two months ago that ended the Mahdi Army’s first uprising, which broke out in April. During that period, US commanders vowed to "capture or kill" al-Sadr, but later tacitly agreed to let Iraqi authorities deal with the cleric.

US forces were apparently continuing the hands-off policy toward al-Sadr. The senior US military officer in Baghdad said the cleric "is not an objective; we are not actively pursuing him."

But the fighting has complicated the security situation for Allawi’s government as it tried to take a tough stance against the mainly Sunni campaign of attacks, bombings and shootings plaguing Iraq for the past 15 months. (AP)

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