Associated Press Writer
5:59 AM PDT, August 9, 2004
NAJAF, Iraq —
A radical cleric whose loyalists battled U.S. troops for the fifth straight day
vowed Monday to fight to the death, and a suicide attacker detonated a car bomb
northeast of the capital, killing six people and wounding the deputy governor
who was the intended target, officials said.
Explosions and gunfire
were heard throughout Najaf and U.S. helicopters hovered overhead as U.S.
forces tried to drive Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militiamen from a vast
cemetery they have repeatedly used as a base. A U.S. tank rolled within 400
yards of Najaf's holiest site, the Imam Ali Shrine, also held by militiamen.
A Najaf hospital spokesman said three were killed, including two
policemen, and 19 wounded. The U.S. military says hundreds of militants have
been killed in the violence in recent days; the militiamen put the number far
lower.
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."
Iraq's defense minister, Hazem
Shaalan, accused neighboring Iran of helping arm the Shiite militiamen.
"There are Iranian-made weapons that have been found in the hands of
criminals in Najaf who received these weapons from across the Iranian border,"
Shaalan said in an interview with the Arab-language television network
al-Arabiya.
Iran has previously denied interfering in Iraq, though it
has acknowledged that fighters might be crossing its long border into Iraq
illegally.
Government officials have said many of those involved in
the Najaf violence were criminals and implied they were not true followers of
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 con tinue
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."
Al-Sadr's words were a 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.
"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.
Much of the fighting has
centered on the vast cemetery near the Imam Ali Shrine. U.S. forces using
helicopter gunships launched a renewed offensive Sunday to drive militants out
of the cemetery after claiming two days earlier to have secured the area in
some of the fiercest fighting.
On Monday, a U.S. tank approached
within about 400 yards of the shrine compound, the closest the military has
come to it in the fighting.
"We cannot conduct negotiations under
shelling," al-Sadr said. "T he Americans are shelling the most holy place here
in Najaf and they want me to negotiate? This is ridiculous."
Mahdi
Army militiamen in Baghdad 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 Al-Jazeera television, militants demanded the government
release all Mahdi Army prisoners in exchange for Khudair, whom they snatched
Sunday.
Iraq's Interior Ministry clamped a curfew Monday on Sadr City,
a Shiite neighborhood in eastern Baghdad where U.S. troops and al-Sadr
militiamen have also been fighting. The curfew, imposed for "security
reasons," will run from 4:00 p.m. to 8:00 a.m., the ministry announced.
In the southern city of Basra, masked al-Sadr followers patrolled some
main streets Monday and set up checkpoints. No Iraqi police or British troops
could be seen, witnesses said.
The Mahdi Army threatened Mo nday to
take over local government buildings in Basra if U.S. troops did not leave
Najaf, and also said they would target oil pipelines and ports in southern
Iraq.
Also Monday, the military reported that a U.S. Marine was
killed in action Sunday in the western 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 death brought to at least 927 the
number of American servicemembers who have died in Iraq.
The Shiite
violence began Thursday in Najaf after the collapse of a series of truces that
ended a two-month uprising in early June. A deadline for militants to withdraw
from Najaf, the center of the worst violence, expired Saturday.
The
car bombing in Balad Ruz, 40 miles northeast of Baghdad, targeted the home of
Diyala province's deputy governor, Aqil Hamid al-Adili, who was in stable
condition and was being treated at a U.S.-led coalition medical facility,
military spokesman Maj. Neal O'Brien said.
Six Iraqi policemen were
killed and at least 17 people wounded, including police and passers-by, Police
Brig. Daoud Mahmoud said.
A white station wagon laden with explosives
blew up outside al-Adili's home, shattering windows and blowing the doors off
their hinges. Al-Adili's 9-year-old son was lightly injured, Mahmoud said.
Guerrillas waging a yearlong insurgency in Iraq 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," the official Islamic
Republic News Agency quoted Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi as saying.
Jihani's kidnappers, in a video released Saturday, accused Iran of
meddling in Iraq's affairs. Scores of other foreigners hav e been kidnapped as
leverage to force foreign troops and businesses from the country.
In
an video posted on the Internet, militants beheaded a hostage identified only
as a Bulgarian. Two Bulgarian truck drivers were kidnapped June 29, and the
beheaded body of one of the drivers was found in mid July and a tape was
released showing his death.
A second decapitated body was found late
last month, prompting fears that the other Bulgarian had been killed, but there
was no video of his slaying released at the time.