Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani back in Iraq.
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| Wed, 08-25-2004 - 9:57am |
Revered Cleric Bids to Halt Najaf Fighting.
Iraq’s most powerful Shiite cleric arrived home from Britain today and his aides called for a nationwide march to Najaf to end nearly three weeks of fierce fighting between US forces and Shiite militants in this holy city.
http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=3405371
US warplanes fired on the neighbourhood, helicopters flew overhead and heavy gunfire was heard in the streets, witnesses said.
Iraqi police sealed off the Old City, preventing cars from entering, and Najaf’s police chief, Major General Ghalib al-Jazaari, said radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia was on its last legs.
“The Mahdi Army is finished,†he said. “Its hours are numbered.â€
Witnesses in the Old City said militants were still fighting in the streets, though the relentless American attacks in Najaf appeared to be weakening them.
Police today arrested several al-Sadr aides with valuables from the sacred Imam Ali Shrine, which they control, in their possession, al-Jazaari said.
One of al-Sadr’s top lieutenants, Sheik Ali Smeisim, was among those arrested.
Grand Ayatollah Ali Husseini al-Sistani, 73, the nation’s top Shiite cleric, crossed into southern Iraq from Kuwait about midday in a caravan of sport utility vehicles accompanied by Iraqi police and national guardsmen. The convoy stopped in the southern city of Basra.
Al-Sistani had been in London for medical treatment since August 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 stabilising the crisis.
Al-Sistani would head to Najaf on Thursday “to stop the bloodshed,†said Al-Sayyid Murtadha Al-Kashmiri, an al-Sistani representative in London. “Those believers who wish to join him, let them join,†he said.
Al-Jazaari, the police chief, cautioned Iraqis not to come to Najaf, saying they should await instructions from al-Sistani, “because their enemies could cause them a disaster and they could put their lives in danger.â€
U.S. forces advance on Iraqi shrine.
http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsPackageArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=571144§ion=news
As helicopter gunships clatter over the holy Iraqi city of Najaf and sniper fire crackles through the alleyways, U.S. soldiers say they are forcing Shi'ite rebels to retreat to the Imam Ali shrine.
The shrine, a sacred site for millions of Shi'ites and now home to mostly fiery young supporters of radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, is increasingly encircled by U.S. and Iraqi forces.
"What we are trying to do is shape up the battlefield. We are trying to isolate them in one place before attacking," U.S. Army 1st Lieutenant Michael Throckmortan told Reuters on Wednesday.
That has been the idea since the Cougar 3-8 Cavalry company arrived in an area of Najaf sandwiched between a dried up waterway and an impoverished neighbourhood that has become a stronghold for Sadr's Mehdi Army militia.
"They were all over the place with AK-47 rifles and rocket- propelled grenades, in all the buildings. There was more than 100 of them," said a U.S. soldier who asked not to be named.
"We hit them with the tanks and pushed them towards the shrine area."
Since the standoff started, most of those fighters have been digging in around the shrine, a golden domed structure that appears peaceful from a distance despite the explosions and bloodshed all around it. The Mehdi Army stills controls the alleyways leading to the shrine that are too small for tanks.
Sadr's men still fire mortars at an abandoned, heavily damaged school occupied by the Cougar 3-8 Cavalry. Two recently landed in the target zone but there were no casualties.
Throckmorton dismissed reports that Sadr's fighters had caved in to U.S. firepower and started fleeing Najaf in large numbers. "I have seen no evidence of that. People flee tanks but I have not seen them leaving," he said.
Najaf has been especially tense since the Iraqi government warned the rebels in the shrine on Tuesday that they faced their final hours before death if they did not give up.
Throckmorton said there were no moves by U.S. or Iraqi forces on the shrine overnight.
U.S. troops and tanks were slightly closer to the shrine, about 300 metres (yards) away, he said, in an area littered with mortars and pipe bombs lying on near-abandoned streets.
All the waiting in a three-week standoff has given snipers plenty of time to place their targets in the cross hairs as tanks and troops advance.
Throckmorton said he hoped Iraqi forces would be the first ones to set foot in the shrine. U.S. and Iraqi officials have said only Iraqi forces would storm the mosque.
In separate violence west of Baghdad, U.S. warplanes and tanks bombed the volatile city of Fallujah for more than two hours, killing at least four people, hospital officials and residents said.


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"They stood in a scene of devastation. Hotels had crumbled into the street. Cars lay blackened and twisted where they had been hit. Goats and donkeys lay dead on the sidewalks. Pilgrims from out of town and locals coming from home walked the streets agape, shaking their heads, stunned by the devastation before them.
As the Mahdi Army fighters did not surrender themselves, neither did they give up their guns. Instead, they took the assault rifles and rocket launchers with which they had commandeered the shrine and loaded them onto donkey carts, covering them with blankets, grain sacks and television sets, and sending them away.
Hours later, Mahdi fighters, some still dressed in their signature black uniforms, could be seen stashing rocket launchers in crates and pushing them into roadside shops."
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/28/international/middleeast/28iraq.html?hp
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