Posted on 08/09/2004 8:32:21 AM PDT by NormsRevenge
NAJAF, Iraq - A radical cleric whose loyalists battled U.S. troops for the fifth straight day Monday vowed to continue fighting and said he would not to budge from the holy city of Najaf, despite government demands that he and his fighters lay down their weapons.
The violence, which raged throughout Shiite areas for a fifth day Monday, forced oil officials to stop pumping from Iraq (news - web sites)'s key southern oil fields, which account for about 1.8 million barrels per day, or 90 percent of Iraq's exports, an official with the South Oil Company said on condition of anonymity.
Meanwhile Monday, a suicide car bomb exploded northeast of the capital killing six people but only wounding the deputy governor who was the apparent target, officials said.
The fighting continued between U.S. forces and Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia. Explosions and gunfire were heard throughout the city and U.S. helicopters hovered overhead. A Najaf hospital spokesman said three were killed, including two policemen, and 19 were wounded.
A senior U.S. military official in Baghdad estimated Monday that 360 insurgents died in Najaf in the first four days of the battle, although al-Sadr's militia insists the toll has been far lower.
Najaf police chief Brig. Ghalib al-Jazaari said about 20 police have been killed in the violence since Thursday.
An al-Sadr official said Monday that seven more militants were killed in Najaf since Sunday evening.
Al-Sadr vowed to keep up the battle.
"I will continue fighting," al-Sadr told reporters. "I will remain in Najaf city until the last drop of my blood has been spilled."
After al-Sadr launched a two-month uprising in April, U.S. commanders vowed to "capture or kill" him, but later tacitly agreed to let Iraqi authorities deal with the cleric. Asked what current U.S. policy toward al-Sadr is, the senior officer in Baghdad said al-Sadr "is not an objective; we are not actively pursuing him."
The fighting has sparked violence in other Shiite areas of Iraq.
In the southern port city of Basra, the Mahdi Army threatened to take over local government buildings and target oil pipelines and ports in southern Iraq if U.S. troops did not leave Najaf.
The threat drove oil officials to stop pumping from the southern fields, the oil official said. Oil in storage tanks was still being loaded onto tankers, the official said. The British military, which patrols Basra, said it had no reports on the shutdown.
Iraqi Oil Ministry spokesman Assem Jihad said he could not confirm the shutdown, but added that any attacks on oil infrastructure would only hurt the interests of the Iraqi people.
"The oil industry is run by Iraqis now and for the sake of Iraqis, this wealth belongs to the Iraqi people and the government's budget relies on it for nearly 95 percent (of its money)," he said. "The only ones that will be effected will be the Iraqi citizens."
Masked Mahdi Army gunmen patrolled some main streets in Basra on Monday and set up checkpoints, witnesses said.
Some clashes broke out and at least one British military vehicle was damaged, said Maj. Ian Clooney, a British military spokesman.
In the Sadr City neighborhood of Baghdad — a heavily Shiite area wracked by fighting in recent days — the government imposed a 4 p.m. to 8 a.m. curfew starting Monday, according Interior Ministry spokesman, ministry spokesman Sabah Kadhim said.
Mahdi Army militiamen in Baghdad also kidnapped a senior Iraqi policeman, Brig. Raed Mohammed Khudair, who is responsible for all police patrols in eastern Baghdad, said Col. Adnan Abdel Rahman, an Interior Ministry spokesman.
In a video broadcast on the pan-Arab network Al-Jazeera, militants said the government should release all Mahdi Army prisoners in exchange for Khudair, whom they snatched Sunday.
Government officials have said many of those involved in the Najaf violence were criminals and implied they were not true followers of al-Sadr, the popular Shiite firebrand. But al-Sadr said the militants were his followers and described them as volunteers fighting for an honorable cause.
"These are honest attacks against the occupation." he said, referring to the U.S. troop presence in the country. "They ... are coming to resist the occupation, to liberate our country."
"Resistance will continue and increase day by day," he said. "Our demand is for the American occupation to get out of Iraq. We want an independent, democratic, free country."
Sadr's words were a defiant challenge to interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, who visited the war-shattered city Sunday under heavy security and called on the Shiite militants to stop fighting. The Mahdi Army militia controls the Imam Ali Shrine compound, one of the most revered sites in Shiite Islam.
"We think that those armed should leave the holy sites and the (Imam Ali Shrine compound) as well as leave their weapons and abide by the law," he said.
On Monday, a U.S. tank approached within about 400 yards of the shrine compound, they closest the military has come to it in the fighting. Much of the clashes have centered on the cemetery, as U.S. forces tried to root out the militants, often with attack helicopters.
"We cannot conduct negotiations under shelling," al-Sadr said. "The Americans are shelling the most holy place here in Najaf and they want me to negotiate? This is ridiculous."
The Shiite violence began Thursday in Najaf after the collapse of a series of truces that ended a two-month uprising in early June.
Also Monday, the military reported that a U.S. Marine was killed in action Sunday in the western Iraqi province of Anbar. Anbar is a Sunni Muslim-dominated area of anti-U.S. resistance that includes Fallujah, Ramadi and Qaim on the Syrian border.
The car bombing Monday in Balad Ruz, 40 miles northeast of Baghdad, occurred about 7:30 a.m. when a white station wagon laden with explosives blew up outside the home of Aqil Hamid al-Adili, deputy governor of Diyala province, military spokesman Maj. Neal O'Brien said.
Six people, including four police officers, were killed in the attack, which shattered the windows of al-Adili's house, blew doors off their hinges and lightly injured the deputy governor's 9-year-old son, police Brig. Daoud Mahmoud said.
Al-Adili was in stable condition at a U.S.-led coalition medical facility, O'Brien said.
At least 17 people were also wounded in the blast, including four police, he said.
Guerrillas have repeatedly used car bombs to attack top officials of the interim government, Iraqi security forces and American troops.
Meanwhile, Iran confirmed Monday that Faridoun Jihani, the Iranian consul to the Iraqi city of Karbala, had been kidnapped, and said he was in good health.
"Iran will do its best to secure the release of the kidnapped Iranian diplomat. We contacted the Iraqi government, Britain and the U.S. interest section in Iran and different related individuals to get his release as soon as possible," the official Islamic Republic News Agency quoted Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi as saying.
Jihani is the second senior diplomat taken hostage in recent weeks, following the brief kidnapping of Egyptian diplomat Mohammed Mamdouh Helmi Qutb last month. Scores of other foreigners have been kidnapped as leverage to force foreign troops and businesses from the country.
In other violence, insurgents near Hillah, about 60 miles south of Baghdad, attacked a police patrol Sunday, killing one police officer and wounding three others, said police spokesman Rahman Mishawi.
Also, a roadside bomb blew up next to a bus traveling on the main street in the town of Khalidiya, about 70 miles west of Baghdad, killing four of the passengers and wounding four other people, said Abdel Rahman Mohammed, a Ramadi hospital worker.
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