IRAQ: Last Sunday evening Karim al- Zuheiri was watching Iraq's footballers play Australia at the Olympic games, writes Luke Harding in Najaf
There had been no power for weeks in Najaf's old city where he lives; and so - ignoring the shellfire from the nearby Imam Ali shrine - he hooked up his television to a car battery.
He and four friends were on the pavement watching the first half when they heard several shots. "We realised an American sniper was shooting at us," Mr Zuheiri says. "We ran inside like gazelles. By the grace of God we got the TV set back on in time to see Iraq score. With the goal we forgot some of our sadness and pain."
For the past three weeks, the dusty alleyway where Mr Zuheiri lives has been transformed into a war zone. The road is 500 metres south of Najaf's golden-domed shrine, where Moqtada al-Sadr's Shia militia has been holding out against the US army.
To get to the shrine you have to go past Mr Zuheiri's terraced corner house, across a shot-up boulevard and through a dense network of small lanes. From there it's a sprint left to the shrine's gateway, opposite Najaf's souk.
"If you walk 20 metres beyond my house you are at the front- line," Mr Zuheiri tells us.
In the past two days, US tanks have advanced further towards the shrine than ever before, encircling the south and east of the complex. They already control the west and have been pulverising the Wadi al-Salam cemetery to the north.
Given their superiority, Mr Zuheiri says he cannot understand why the US military has not yet finished the job.
But with the battle for Najaf entering a stage of bloody attrition, life for the civilians caught in the middle has become intolerable.
Five days ago a US tank pulled up outside the house of Yassir al- Abayechi, one of Mr Zuheiri's neighbours, whose home is now on the wrong side of the frontline.
"The tank suddenly appeared," says Mr Abayechi, a 22-year-old student. "The American soldier in it started shouting, 'Go, go.' I understand a few words of English so I grabbed my stuff and ran. I took my mother, sister and brother. We haven't been back."
Mr Abayechi is bitterly critical of all sides.
"If I step out of my house I get killed in a mortar attack. If I criticise the Mahdi army they will kill me. If I attack the interim government they will kill me and if I attack the Americans they will kill me as well."
He tells us Saddam Hussein had arrested then executed both his father and uncle in 1985, but that life under the previous regime was preferable to the current situation.
"Under Saddam we were living in a big prison, but there was security. Now they claim that we have democracy, but what is the point of that if we don't have security?" he asks.
At least 52 civilians have been killed and 223 wounded in Najaf since Mr al-Sadr launched his latest uprising. Mr Zuheiri tells us about an old woman living a few doors away who had been one of the victims.
"An American sniper shot her in the chest and stomach," he says. "It was impossible to get her to hospital. She died. We, the people of Najaf, are the victims of all this."
The civilian population of Najaf's old city - a narrow grid of dusty streets - has had no water or electricity since the fighting began. They have had no ration cards for two months and are running out of food.
While we sit in Mr Zuheiri's sweltering front room, a group of Mahdi army fighters knocked on the door demanding to know who we were. Several minutes later an American tank rumbled past.
When someone is killed, residents say it is not always easy to know who to blame.
The night bombings by US jets are terrifying, they say. "We didn't sleep," says Mr Zuheiri, who teaches at the local primary school.
Soon after midnight yesterday, a US warplane pounded the city again. Artillery exchanges continued for several hours, until the fighting eased at 8 a.m.
By lunchtime the mortars had started again, crashing into Najaf's cemetery and sending trails of black smoke above the city.
"We don't want a bloodbath in the holy city," says one of Mr Zuheiri's relatives, Sabar al- Zuheiri. "We call on the Islamic world to intervene."
And what about the Olympics? Could Iraq's football team surprise the world and win the gold medal after its 1-0 victory over Australia? "I don't think so," Mr Zuheiri says. - (Guardian service)