US troops have edged toward the centre of the Shi'ite Muslim holy city of Najaf in search of Fedayeen paramilitary fighters loyal to Saddam Hussein.
US officers said they believed most of the Fedayeen forces had simply dropped their equipment and fled but that a few were in the city fighting.
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"Ideally, we would kill them all," Colonel Joseph Anderson, a brigade commander of the 101st Airborne Division, said. "But if they choose to change their mind and flee, there's not much we can do. But they lost their equipment and their chain of command, so that's ok too".
Mortars, rockets and sporadic gunfire echoed before dawn and US soldiers then fanned out in house-to-house searches to secure neighbourhoods.
Soldiers said they found caches of rocket-propelled grenades, assault rifles and multiple-launch rocket systems in their searches of homes yesterday.
Dozens of suspected Saddam Fedayeen militia and ruling Baath Party activists were also captured but there was less fighting than many US officers said they had expected.
The New York Timessaid US military officers were in contact with aides to a very senior Shi'ite cleric in the city about how to govern it in the absence of pro-Saddam forces.
Shi'ites form a majority in Iraq, and especially in southern areas now largely controlled by US-led forces, but they have long been dominated by the Sunni minority, to which President Saddam Hussein belongs. Shi'ites are the dominant group in Iran.
Najaf, about 100 miles south of Baghdad, is one of Iraq's most important religious centres and home to the gold-domed Ali Mosque, which is revered by Shi'ite Muslims and contains the tomb of Imam Ali bin Abi Talib - cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet Mohammed.