Posted on 08/13/2004 3:49:58 AM PDT by Barney Gumble
NAJAF, Iraq - Iraqi officials and aides to a radical Shiite cleric were trying to negotiate an end to nine days of fighting in the holy city of Najaf on Friday, after U.S. forces suspended an offensive against Muqtada al-Sadr's militia, officials said. Aides said al-Sadr had been wounded by shrapnel.
In the southern city of Basra, gunmen seized a British journalist, identified as James Brandon, from a hotel where he was staying late Thursday night, police said Friday. The kidnappers threatened to kill him in 24 hours unless coalition forces withdraw from Najaf, though it wasn't clear when that deadline would expire.
Also Friday,
With the talks ongoing, the U.S. military said Friday that it had suspended offensive operations against al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia, who are holed up the city's vast cemetery and the Imam Ali shrine, one of the holiest sites to Shiite Muslims.
"We are allowed to engage the enemy only in self defense and long enough to break contact," said Maj. Bob Pizzateli, executive officer for the 1st Battalion, 5th Cavalry Regiment of the 1st Cavalry Division. "That was a blanket order for everybody."
He said the militia appeared to have stopped most attacks as well, and the city appeared quieter Friday, a day after the U.S. military announced it had begun a major offensive to rout the militants.
"Hopefully the talks will go well and everything will be resolved peacefully," Pizzateli said.
Najaf Gov. Adnan al-Zurufi said the talks were between Iraqi government officials and al-Sadr's representatives. National Security Adviser Mouwaffaq al-Rubaie traveled to Najaf on Thursday. U.S. officials were not involved in the talks, al-Zurufi said.
Despite the talks, the U.S. military said it was still maintaining a cordon around the shrine, the cemetery and Najaf's old city, where the militants had taken refuge, Pizzateli said.
Al-Sadr, who has led an uprising against coalition troops for more than a week in the holy city, was hit by shrapnel in the chest and twice in a leg as he met with members of his Mahdi Army militia near the Imam Ali shrine early Friday, said aide Haider al-Tousi.
Another of al-Sadr's spokesmen said the cleric's condition was stable. He may be holed up in the compound housing the revered shrine, along with his loyalists, while one aide, Haider al-Tousi, said he was moved to an unknown destination.
Brig. Gen. Erv Lessel, deputy director for operations for the coalition forces, said he could not confirm reports that al-Sadr was wounded.
"Multinational forces are operating under firm instructions not to pursue Muqtada and not to conduct operations within the exclusion zone surrounding the Imam Ali and Kufa Mosques," he said in a statement.
Al-Sadr urged his followers to remain calm.
"We got a letter from him saying 'Be steadfast and behave rationally, don't surrender to your emotions,'" Aws al-Khafaji, from al-Sadr's office in the southern town of Nasiriyah, told the Al-Jazeera Arab television.
In Basra, gunmen abducted the British journalist from the Diafa Hotel Thursday night, police Capt. Hashem Abdullah said Friday.
Hotel staff showed a check-in form purportedly filled out by the man. On the form, he identified himself as James Andrew Brandon, 23, working for the Sunday Telegraph. It said he checked in on Wednesday.
A video released Friday showed a man who identified himself as Brandon. He stood bare-chested with a bandage on his head.
The "Telegraph, that's my paper," he said, turning to a masked captor.
"I'm a journalist. I just write about what's happening in Iraq (news - web sites)," he said.
The militants, almost certainly Shiite, said they had taken Brandon hostage in protest of the U.S. military presence in Najaf.
"We are the sons of the Iraqi people," said one captor, wearing a black mask. "We demand the withdrawal of the occupation forces from the holy city of Najaf in 24 hours, otherwise we will kill this British hostage," he said, putting a hand on Brandon's shoulder.
The video was given to Associated Press Television News after a freelance cameraman was taken to the location where he's believed to be held.
Kidnappers in Iraq have seized scores of hostages in recent months, threatening to kill them in an effort to drive out coalition forces and companies that support them. Most of those kidnappers have been Sunni insurgents, and Shiites using the tactic would be a new development.
Brandon was the third journalist kidnapped in Iraq in recent months. In April, two Japanese journalists were among a group of Japanese abducted near the city of Fallujah and released unharmed.
Hotel owner Mohammed Uglah said gunmen found Brandon and shot at him after he tried to escape, hitting him across the head before taking him away. Video footage showed a trail of blood leading down a set of stairs in the hotel, but Brandon did not appear seriously hurt in the tape.
Britain's Foreign Office confirmed that a British national had been abducted in Basra but said it couldn't confirm the person's identity because it was still trying to contact next of kin. A Sunday Telegraph editor confirmed Brandon wrote stories for the paper.
"James Brandon was in Basra filing material for this Sunday's newspaper amongst other projects," Sunday Telegraph Deputy Editor Matthew d'Ancona said. "We are pursuing his situation with the greatest concern."
The Najaf offensive threatened to enrage Iraq's Shiite majority — especially if the fighting damages the shrine — and presented the biggest test yet for interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, a secular Shiite who is trying to crush the violence plaguing the country while working to persuade Iraqis of the legitimacy of his unelected government.
Nearly 5,000 al-Sadr sympathizers had taken to the streets in Basra on Thursday, demanding U.S. troops withdraw from Najaf and condemning Allawi for working with the Americans. Several hundred Iraqis also protested in Baghdad.
Iraq's top Shiite Muslim cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who left Najaf for London to undergo medical treatment before fighting broke out, expressed "deep sorrow and great worry" about the violence and called on all sides to end the crisis quickly. His office was working to mediate an end to the fighting, he said.
Violence across the country, much of it involving al-Sadr's fighters, has killed at least 172 Iraqis and injured 643 since Wednesday morning, the Health Ministry said.
The casualty toll from Thursday's fighting in the holy city was unclear. At least five Iraqi civilians were killed by the afternoon, said Nabil Mohammed, a health worker in the city. Two American soldiers were wounded by a mortar shell while standing in an intersection on the cemetery's edge, the military said.
The U.S. Defense Department said that about 2,200 Marines, along with 500 to 1,000 soldiers and an undisclosed number of U.S.-trained Iraqi troops, were involved in the offensive Thursday.
Ifyou think our military ius calling the shots here, you're dreaming. If they were, Najaf would be a smoking hole in the ground.
Once again, MONDAY MORNING QUARTER-BACKING - from the U.S. State Department and possibly Carl Rove - engineer of defeat is responsible for all this..
I agree, it does seem that once again, we are afraid of offending arab sensibilities by not delivering the final death stroke to these dogs. As an ex-Marine, if I was in one of the line companies over there, I wouyld be p!$$## off. My rational? The sooner we finish this the sooner I get home. Finish the damn thing!
John Kerry: "I spent last week in the holy city of Najaf, with the freedom fighters, under double secret top slassified my-eyes-only stuff, as the f***in' American infidel killers attacked our holy mosque position, and I'd like to report that the memories of that week are seared in my, I say seared, in what's left of my brain. War criminals all of them."
yup, this's gettin boring-am 'tuning out' iraq news 'til some DECISIVE news makes itself heard no matter how deep i put my 'head into the sand'....
Once again, MONDAY MORNING QUARTER-BACKING - from the U.S. State Department and possibly Carl Rove - engineer of defeat is responsible for all this.
Well you have proved that you are not posting from Najaf, but from a tin foil factory, IMO.
Also if you want to blame Karl Rove, there is a site I would recommend you visit where you will feel welcomed. It's intials are DU.
EDS NOTE GRAPHIC CONTENT -- Iraqi civilians look at the body of an Iraqi national guardsman killed by insurgents and left in the street of the Sadr city neighbourhood of Baghdad, Iraq (news - web sites) Friday Aug. 13, 2004. Clashes in the Baghdad Shiite slum of Sadr City killed three Iraqis and wounded 33 others, health officials said.
I don't know about that. It seems to me that every time we stop and "let them regroup", the circle they are regrouping to is much smaller than the where they started from. There is no place for them to hide anymore. Laying Siege to the militants (read as enemy of the Iraqi People), is a time honored tradition in the military. Saves ammo, and save the lives of our soldiers.
I'll refrain from making any comments about W, because I don't think he's involved in the day-to-day ground operations, as the generals there are.
I hope there's a method to this start-and-stop madness, as each time it happens, we take more and more casualties. I'm hoping the Iraqi Army is getting into place and will soon finish off the Sadr scum's band of murderers from Iran and elsewhere.
Time will tell.
Welcome to FR, Atlanta.
BTW, I thought there was no such thing as being an "ex-Marine".
You have to remember that we turned over command to the Iraqi Governing council. In effect, our military takes their orders from the Iraqi's now. Bush has nothing to do with it.
I know this from having lived through Viet Nam and reading these articles.
Thye are crapping around over there, fighting a politically correct war with a bunch of demons who want ot kill all of us and destroy the west.
The U.S. State Department and SOMEBODY close to Bush are playing dice with the lives of American troops and with us.
If Bush looses this election, it will be over this pusillamious attitude towards this bunch of primitive killers and our wide open borders.
Karl Rove is a poor campaign strategist and man of no political principles.
Are you his son or something????
Laying siege to them is fine.
As long as Sadr doesn't get out of this alive.
If he gets away with this he spawn many more clones.
Agreed! I trust our military leaders, not the "Nuke Mecca" crowd.
Wow, we have gone from Najaf, where you seem to have crowned yourself as a self-proclaimed expert to the borders.
You are jumping around like jumping bean all based on media reports and your self procalimed omnipotent knowledge.
"because I don't think he's involved in the day-to-day ground operations, as the generals there are."
My guess is Colin Powell's fingerprints are all over this and the generals over there have their hands tied - just as they were in Viet Nam.
Are you his son or something????
Uh no.
Are you Carville's associate?
"In effect, our military takes their orders from the Iraqi's now. Bush has nothing to do with it."
So why did we do it??
And why is it o.k. to take orders from the Iraqi Council and not o.k. to take them from the nujobs in the U.N.?
Since when do U.S. troops get their marching orders from a foreign power???
Since when do U.S. troops get their marching orders from a foreign power???
Well, there is the small fact that it's their country.
Do you live in America, pal?? Maybe you're held up in a mountain in Idaho or someplace like that.
There are expanding little Mexicos and little Honduras all over the place and Americans are getting sick and tired of it.
I'm sick and tired of having to see everything in two different languages.
And I guess you can't follow two streams of thought simultaneously.
Bush is infintely better than Kerry who would simply pull out. But there ARE some serious problems with Bush - like Colin Powell, Norman Mineta, and Carl Rove.
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