A girl in a wheelchair is held up by volunteer human shields in the courtyard of Imam Ali's shrine in Najaf. Picture / Reuters
Posted on 08/16/2004 6:57:31 PM PDT by BlackVeil
1.30pm - Around 2000 self-styled "human shields" poured into Najaf yesterday to join Shiite insurgents holed up in the gold-domed mosque, as fresh battles in the holy city prevented a quick victory by US and Iraqi forces.
US forces backed by tanks exchanged fire with the followers of Moqtada al Sadr, the rebel Shiite cleric whose supporters barricaded inside the Imam Ali shrine were joined by the unarmed but defiant "human shields."
But as the crackle of machine gun fire echoed through the old city, armed Iraqi police turned their ire against journalists in the city.
Last night they fired warning shots at and over the Sea of Najaf hotel after arresting a correspondent from Al Arabiya in what appeared to be a continued campaign of harassment against journalists in Najaf.
As journalists protested during the arrest, a police lieutenant said above the hubbub: "We are going to open fire on this hotel. We are going to smash it up. I will kill you all. You did this all to yourselves."
In a threat which did not immediately appear to have been carried out, he said that four snipers would be positioned on the roof of the police station to fire at any journalists who left the hotel.
The police contingent drove to the hotel in two marked police Landcruisers at around 6.30pm and demanded to know the whereabouts of correspondents from Al Arabyia and the international news agencies Reuters and AP.
The visit to the hotel, the fourth by police in just over 24 hours, followed a threat earlier in the day by the chief of Najaf police Ghalab al-Jazaari personally to arrest the correspondent from al Arabyia, Ahmed al-Saleh.
The police chief, who on Sunday had ordered all journalists to leave Najaf, however added in response to questions that reporters were free to stay at the hotel but at their own risk.
"We are not responsible [for you]" he added.
Scuffling broke out as a hotel employee angrily remonstrated with the policemen saying: "Are you Iraqis? You are police but you have no right to do this."
The police then drove off, stopping 300 metres down a road directly opposite the police station and fired warning shots in the direction of the hotel. Journalists were threatened with shooting if they left the building. The al Arabiya correspondent was later released.
But the fighting in Najaf -which has killed at least two US soldiers since the collapse of peace talks on Saturday- yesterday overshadowed and divided the second day of the Iraqi National Conference as it attempted to elect a new interim national assembly.
The conference yesterday decided to dispatch a delegation to Najaf, in the apparently slender hope of persuading al Sadr to disband his insurgent Mehdi Army and turn it into a political party.
Sheikh Ahmed Shaibani, a Sadr spokesman, warned in response to the proposal, approved on a show of hands at the conference, that the issue of disarming the militia could only be solved by "negotiations and not a unilateral decision".
The enthusiastic supporters of Sadr came from across Iraq-including hundreds of demonstrators who came on solidarity marches to the city at the end of last week-and are now based in the compound around the Imam Ali shrine.
Mr Shaibani, who is also a Mehdi Army commander, said the presence of the civilians was intended to deter American forces.
Their presence maximises the loss of human life that could result from any attempt to storm the holy sites, a course already fraught with danger because of the outrage that serious physical damage to the shrine itself would provoke across Iraq and well beyond. The human shield supporters also appear ready to take up arms left by insurgents killed or wounded in the fighting.
The battle continued yesterday as insurgents used their extensive local knowledge of the huge Wadi al Salam cemetery, a section of which remains within the area under the Mehdi Army's control to play what one US officer called a "cat and mouse game" with US forces.
Insurgents inside the Imam Ali shrine in alleyways and on rooftops with AK-47 rifles and rocket-propelled grenades sporadically fired at US troops in the cemetery.
Meanwhile the conflict reignited in the main Baghdad battleground of Sadr City where insurgents attacked an American tank, setting it on fire. The crew were rescued and evacuated with minor wounds, according to a spokesman for the US 1st Cavalry Division.
While witnesses were reported as saying the tank was hit by a Mehdi Army rocket-propelled grenade, US forces said that the insurgents had planted a roadside bomb.
The proposal for a delegation to Najaf was put forward by a distant relative-and opponent-- of Sadr, Baghdad cleric Sheikh Hussein al-Sadr, who told the conference
"There are inviolable conditions in civilised countries, particularly that there is no place for armed militias."
But Falah Hassan Shanshal of the Shiite Political Council, a grouping of Shiite politicians, said the proposal was all "smoke and mirrors" and threatened to walk out of the conference partly in protest at the method of voting.
He said it was merely reiterating the demands made by Iyad Allawi's government on Sunday which warned the militia that they have a "small window of opportunity" to leave the shrine, lay down their weapons and enter the political process.
Jawad al-Maliky, a senior member of the Dawa party, the Shiite religious faction of the interim Vice President Ibrahim Jafaari, and one of three senior delegates to have met with the Prime Minister Iyad Allawi on Sunday said: "We told the prime minister that the matter (Najaf) is really threatening the whole political transition process and everything we do would be meaningless if our holy cities were attacked."
A girl in a wheelchair is held up by volunteer human shields in the courtyard of Imam Ali's shrine in Najaf. Picture / Reuters
Human shields make excellent targets, plus you have a willing victim and someone happy to kill them. It's a win-win situation.
Good. Let the Leftist lemmings meet the same fate as the terrorists they champion. And good riddance to bad rubbish.
BTTT
I think the Iraqi police chief said it best.
If these human shields are anything like their predecessors in Baghdad, they wouldn't be running into Najaf unless they thought that the fighting was over and they wouldn't actually have to put their lives on the line.
Human shields = Insurgents. Unleash the Dogs of War.
You big tough "men" make me sick. You're a bunch of wusses. Lifting a child in a wheelchair to go to the front of the line...what pigs.
Cavalry and Marines?!?!? these guys are double dead.May God have mercy on thier souls I know the Cav and the Jarheads definately wont.Get some!
Infiltrate. And take pictures.
Seriously - If you voluntarily join yourself to a miitia engaged in combat, you are not a human shield, you are a combatant, albeit a very poorly armed one. I'd wish them good luck, but I'm rooting for our guys. I don't know how anyone can route for people who hide behind crippled kids.
Has the neutron bomb ever been field tested? Wouldn't this be a good time to try?
drop the Hormel pork patty bomb
Just put a 2 gigawatt radio transmitter (with the frequency reset to that of a microwave oven) outside the mosque, and turn it on! Within minutes this would be over.
And hopefully roasted crispy well done on all sides.
Gas them with a nice knock out gas that makes them throw up on themselves after they wake up.
That should be helpful IMO!
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