Fighting continues to rage in Najaf

IRAQ’S prime minister ordered Shi’ite fighters to lay down their weapons and leave the holy city of Najaf last night, but fighting raged on with US helicopter gunships pounding guerrilla positions.

Four days of intense fighting in the heart of Najaf, across southern Iraq and in several districts of Baghdad has raised fears of a second Shi’ite Muslim uprising and piled pressure on Prime Minister Iyad Allawi’s 40-day-old interim government.

In an effort to staunch growing Shi’ite radicalism and a 16-month Sunni-led insurgency, the government has in the past two days introduced an amnesty for low-level guerrillas while reinstating the death penalty for hard-line criminals.

Despite that carrot-and-stick approach, however, fighting shows little sign of abating, and kidnapping - a common currency of insurgents in recent months - continues apace.

During a brief tour of Najaf yesterday, during which he was protected by scores of heavily armed US guards, Mr Allawi urged militants to down their weapons or face the consequences.

“There is no negotiation with any militia that bears arms against Iraq and the Iraqi people,” he told reporters in the shell-scarred city, 100 miles south of Baghdad.

“I believe gunmen should leave the holy sites ... quickly, lay down their weapons and return to the rule of order and law.”

Hundreds of Shi’ite militants have been killed or wounded in Najaf over the past four days, according to the US military and medical officials, as clashes between US forces and militiamen loyal to rebel cleric Moqtada al-Sadr intensify.

Two Apache gunships fired missiles at defences manned by Mr Sadr’s militia near Najaf’s ancient cemetery. The militia, known as the Mehdi Army, dug in, laying mines around the burial ground.

US soldiers advanced on the city’s Imam Ali shrine, the holiest site in Shi’ite Islam, tightening a noose around insurgent positions, while loudspeakers exhorted the militia to fight back, ordering: “Engage in Jihad.”

Clashes also erupted anew in the Baghdad slum district of Sadr City, and in other Baghdad areas, while across southern Iraq tensions remained high in several Shi’ite-dominant cities, including Nassiriya, Amara, Basra and Diwaniya.

At least two mortar bombs hit a street near a Baghdad hotel used by foreigners yesterday, wounding at least three people.

In Kerbala, a Shi’ite city 32 miles north of Najaf, an Iranian diplomat was kidnapped by militants, according to the Iranian embassy, the second foreign diplomat seized in a wave of kidnappings since April.

The string of abductions, mostly targeting foreign truck drivers, appears aimed at forcing foreign governments to pull their troops out, and foreign companies to cease operations.