IRAQ: US marines said on yesterday that they were preparing a final assault on Iraqi Shi'ite militia in the holy city of Najaf, after a radical cleric ordered his men to keep fighting even if he was killed.
As a showdown loomed between US troops and militia loyal to Moqtada al-Sadr in Najaf, thousands of his supporters vented their anger against interim Prime Minister Mr Iyad Allawi.
In Nassiriya, one of seven cities where a radical Shi'ite uprising has taken hold in the past week, demonstrators burned down Mr Allawi's political party office and called for his overthrow.
On the political front, leading politician Dr Ahmad Chalabi, once tipped to lead post-war Iraq, returned to Baghdad to face an arrest warrant.
The US warning in Najaf came as sporadic clashes between American troops and Sadr's Mehdi militia echoed from the heart of the southern city, where hundreds have been killed or wounded around some of Iraq's holiest Shi'ite Muslim sites.
"Iraqi and US forces are making final preparations as we get ready to finish this fight that the Moqtada militia started," Col Anthony Haslam, commanding officer of the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit in Najaf, said in a statement.
Most of Sadr's men and the young cleric himself are based around Najaf's ancient Shi'ite cemetery or the adjoining Imam Ali Shrine. Storming such holy symbols could precipitate a revolt among Iraq's majority Shi'ite community.
In fresh violence elsewhere, at least six Iraqis were killed and 10 wounded when a bomb exploded in a market just north of Baghdad, hospital sources said.
Workers at an oil pumping station in Nassiriya said they had stopped operations to protest at Mr Allawi's backing of the US offensive in Najaf. The station had cut supplies of refined products and liquefied natural gas to Baghdad, the workers said.
The crisis in Najaf also appears to have caused rifts in Mr Allawi's administration after Deputy President Mr Ibrahim Jaafari urged US troops to leave the city to end the fighting.
US forces say they have killed 360 Sadr loyalists so far in Najaf, home to 600,000 people, some 160 km south of Baghdad. Sadr's spokesmen say far fewer have died during the second rebellion by the militia in four months.
Meanwhile, three reporters working for Iran's official IRNA news agency, who were reported kidnapped by state television, have in fact been arrested by Baghdad police, one of the agency's senior editors said yesterday.