Posted on 08/25/2004 5:58:18 AM PDT by TexKat
NAJAF, Iraq (AFP) - US forces smashed through militia defences, trapping Moqtada Sadr's Mehdi Army inside their shrine bastion and prompting Iraq's Shiite spiritual leader to head back home to lead a bid to "save Najaf".
After three weeks of intense fighting, US planes fired three missiles within metres (yards) of the revered Imam Ali mausoleum, shattering windows inside its ornate galleries and sending up clouds of dust, an AFP correspondent said Wednesday.
US armoured vehicles held the shrine in a pincer grip from the west and east, pounding the south with heavy artillery fire as snipers fired on all those coming or going from the mausoleum, where up to 600 people are inside.
The closest US vehicle was 20 metres (yards) from the western gate of the complex, one of the most important Shiite pilgrimage sites in the world and for four months the headquarters of radical cleric Moqtada Sadr's Mehdi Army.
By midday all four doors of the compound were bolted, perhaps to forestall any serious damage to the shrine, likely to inflame religious sensibilities across the country and Middle East.
Hundreds of heavily-armed Iraqi national guardsmen, who were deployed in the Old City for the first time Tuesday, continued to patrol the streets and alleyways about 300 metres away.
US fire pummelled all main roads leading from the gates into the Old City and only a few dared venture out, sprinting for their lives to collect basic necessities such as bread.
Hassan was one of three fighters who walked about a kilometre (less than a mile) through the battered streets of the Old City to bring one of their comrades, shot through the chest, to the clinic in the shrine.
"Last night we were completely surrounded by the Americans... We can't shoot now because if they locate us, they will attack us from the air and destroy everything," he said, lying on the ground as people poured water on his face and fanned him with empty cigarette cartons.
A doctor at the shrine's small clinic said at least 30 people with serious injuries were in urgent need of evacuation, fearing for dozens of others stranded on the battlefield or nearby houses.
The US military said Iraqi security forces, supported by the marines, conducted overnight operations and that all air raids Tuesday night had been "defensive in nature".
Faced with a crisis situation, Iraq's top Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, called on Iraqis to be ready to march on Najaf to save the city as he left London after medical treatment, an aide told Al-Arabiya.
"Ayatollah Sistani is going to return in a few hours to the homeland to save Najaf... We call on all Iraqis... to prepare to march on Najaf" to save the city, Hamad al-Khaffaf told the television channel from the British capital.
Iraqi and US troops have been braced for what officials have called an imminent assault on the shrine, ordered to kill or capture Sadr unless he surrenders, days before Monday's anniversary of the birth of Ali, the Shiites' 12th imam.
"If Moqtada Sadr surrenders, he will be safe and sound. If he resists, the only thing for him is death or prison," Defence Minister Hazem al-Shaalan told the television cameras Tuesday.
Sadr aides had said he was ready to renegotiate peace but would not accept humiliation after the three-week conflict.
Despite announcing four days ago they would hand over control of the shrine to representatives of Sistani, the agreement has since stalled.
Najaf's governor, who has championed the use of US troops in an effort to flush the Mehdi Army out of what was once a glorious holy city, said only Iraqi troops and not Americans would evict militiamen from the shrine if necessary.
Away from Najaf, US planes and tanks also pounded suspected insurgent positions in the flashpoint city of Fallujah, in an operation that began first thin in the morning, the US military said.
Lieutenant Colonel T.V. Johnson refused to confirm whether the operations were still ongoing and said he had no information about casualties.
In the last two months the US military has conducted several air strikes in the Sunni Muslim bastion, where US troops have faced some of the toughest resistance to their continued presence in Iraq.
A U.S. Army Abrams tank commander checks his machine gun while maintaining a cordon on the southern flank of Najaf's old town August 25, 2004. U.S. and Iraqi forces made no move on a sacred shrine overnight, despite threats from the interim government that rebels holed up inside faced their final hours before an attack. REUTERS/Thaier Al-Sudani
Checkmate! time to smokem' out and give em' what they deserve.
Are we encouraging Sistani to do this?
Sounds scary, you just almost hear the sound of marching as hundred of thousand of brave Iraqis.........Wait a minute, I've got to stop laughing.
This is all planned stuff.
in the Sunni Muslim bastion....
ooops! if they got the most basic fact wrong hoe can any of the article be trusted.
riters and editors are ignorant of the most basic fact.
The shrine is a Shia holy place.
An Iraqi police officer, wearing a gas mask on his head as a windscreen, grips a machine gun while riding in the rear of a pickup truck in Najaf, August 25, 2004. Fierce fighting in Najaf has put everyone on edge but no one is most nervous than the police. Hundreds of Iraqi policemen have been killed across Iraq since an insurgency was mounted after the fall of Saddam Hussein last year. REUTERS/Chris Helgren
The "Sunni Muslim bastion" line was about Fallujah. Read it again. They tacked on some info about an airstrike in Fallujah to the end of the article.
Four people were killed and seven injured as US planes and tanks pounded suspected insurgent positions in the flashpoint city of FALLUJAH.(AFP/File/Antonio Scorza)
Cry me a river..........
Smoke billows above the shrine of Imam Ali during clashes between militiamen loyal to radical Iraqi Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr and US-led Iraqi forces in the holy city of Najaf.(AFP/Ahmad Al-Rubaye)
PS .. The respirator will not seal around your face properly unless you are clean shaven. much less a tablecloth tied around your head. ROFL
ROFL!!
Is he wearing it with the mouth piece protecting his eyes?
Shiite faithfull hoist a picture of Grand Ayatollah Ali Husseini al-Sistani, 73, after he crossed into southern Iraq from Kuwait about midday in a convoy escorted by Iraqi police and national guardsmen in to the southern city of Basra, Wednesday Aug. 25, 2004. Al-Sistani has been in London for medical treatment since Aug. 6, one day after clashes erupted in Najaf. The cleric wields enormous influence among Shiite Iraqis and his return could play a crucial role in stabilizing the crisis. (AP Photo/Nabil al Jurani)
An Iraqi Shi'ite man kisses a portrait of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq 's most influential Shi'ite cleric outside al-Hakim mosque, where Sistani is staying in the southern Iraqi city of Basra, August 25, 2004. Sistani crossed into Iraqi from Kuwait after returning from London where had been treated for a heart condition for three weeks. The cleric called on Iraqis to march on the 'burning city' of Najaf, where fresh fighting erupted near a sacred shrine on Wednesday. The news of his imminent return came as U.S. and Iraqi forces tightened their grip around Mehdi Army militants loyal to a rebel cleric who has holed up in Najaf's Imam Ali mosque. REUTERS/Atef Hassan
Can't really tell, but the M249 gunner might be on the back of a vehicle. If he is, he might just be wearing the Gas Mask so that he has eye protection against the dust & debris kicked up while moving. That would explain the bandana and the lack of filtration canisters on the mask.
All of the "introduction to Islam" books I've ever read make a big deal out of the alleged fact that Islam is a religion without an official clergy. What a bunch of crap that is; Islam is dominated by clericalism - totally. You don't see Christians marching down the street with placards of Billy Graham or Jack Van Impe.
I want us to suceed but I am a realist. The Muslim World never has had a democracy, and will choose to go with a familiar Islamic Theocracy. We are at War With Radical Islam, allowing people like Al-Sistani to be involved in the government is like allowing "moderate" Nazis to be involved in the new German Government post-World War 2.
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