US forces in Iraq claimed yesterday to have killed 300 insurgents loyal to the radical Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr in fighting in Najaf, which poses a stern test for an interim government struggling to stamp its authority over the country.
A spokesman for Sheikh al-Sadr denied that many militia had been killed in fighting over the past two days. He said 36 militiamen died in several Iraqi cities from clashes that have fuelled fears of a new rebellion of radical Shias.
The fresh fighting, which still raged yesterday, marks a major challenge for US-backed Prime Minister Mr Iyad Allawi and appears to have destroyed a two-month-old ceasefire between US forces and Sheikh al-Sadr's Mahdi militia.
"The number of enemy casualties is 300 KIA [killed in action\]," said Lieut Col Gary Johnston, operations officer for the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit, at a military base near the city, 160 km south of Baghdad.
"The marines are here and I think you know how they operate. If you kill a marine, the marines are going to fight back."
Lieut Col Johnston said two marines had been killed and 12 wounded. He told reporters that the Mahdi fighters were badly co-ordinated and shot at random against the heavily armed marines who were backed up by F-16 fighter jets, AC-130 gunships and helicopters.
Much of the fighting took place around the mausoleums and small caves of Najaf's ancient Shia cemetery, the largest in the Arab world and a popular sanctuary for Mahdi fighters. In Najaf's streets, market stalls burned as ordinary Iraqis cowered in their homes. Thick black smoke rose over the city.
Despite the marine onslaught, hundreds of Mahdi militia carrying AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades roamed the city near Najaf's shrines, some of the holiest in Shia Islam. Gunfire damaged the dome of the Imam Ali shrine, some said.
The escalation in fighting came as Iranian-born Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani (73) flew to London for heart treatment. He is seen by the US and many Iraqis as more moderate and is also the country's most influential Shia cleric, who has carefully and quietly tried to keep a lid on Sheikh al-Sadr's agitating.
In London, meanwhile, the US yesterday sought the extradition of an al-Qaeda suspect alleged to have been a main fundraiser for the terrorist organisation.
In Pakistan, from where much of this week's information has emerged leading to arrests in Britain and the heightened security alert in the US, it was disclosed that two high-profile al-Qaeda detainees, Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani and Mohammad Naeem Noor Khan, e-mailed colleagues from jail in an orchestrated "sting" operation which allowed security authorities to trap them.