US claims to have killed 300 rebels in Najaf

US FORCES said yesterday that they had killed an estimated 300 fighters loyal to a firebrand Iraqi Shi'ite cleric in fierce clashes around the holy city of Najaf in the past two days.

However, a spokesman for radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr denied that many fighters had been killed.

He said 36 militiamen had been killed in several Iraqi cities after clashes that have felled fears of a new rebellion by radical Shi'ites.

The fresh fighting, which still raged last night, marks a major challenge for the interim government of Prime Minister Iyad Allawi and appears to have destroyed a two-month-old ceasefire between US forces and Sadr's Mehdi militia.

"The number of enemy casualties is 300 KIA (killed in action)," Lieutenant Colonel Gary Johnston, operations officer for the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit, said at a military base near the city, which is 100 miles south of Baghdad.

Lt Col Johnston said the Mehdi fighters were badly coordinated and shot at random against the heavily-armed American marines, who were backed up by helicopter gunships and fighter planes.

"There is fighting right now. In some ways it is not as intense as yesterday," he said. "If you are on the ground, it makes no difference. But the marines are here and I think you know how they operate. If you kill a marine, the marines are going to fight back."

US military officials said there were indications that foreign fighters had joined the Mehdi militia.

Criminal gangs were also involved, they added.

Asked about American casualties, Johnston said there were two dead and 12 wounded from the two days of fighting.

The US-appointed governor of Najaf put the militia death toll at 400, with a further 1,000 fighters captured. He added that he had information that 80 Iranians were fighting alongside Sadr's militia.

However, Sheik Raed al-Qathimi, a spokesman for the militia, rebuffed the American version of the death toll, saying: "I categorically deny these American lies."

Meanwhile, British and Italian troops also fought the Mehdi militia across Shi'ite-dominated southern Iraq - in Basra, Amara and Nassiriya - while fighting raged in Sadr City and Shoula, two Shi'ite districts of Baghdad.

The Iraqi health ministry said fighting in Sadr City alone had killed 20 Iraqis and wounded 114 since early on Thursday, while in Nassiriya, six were dead and 13 wounded.

The flare-up of tension with radical members of Iraq's majority community comes after Shi'ite militants rose up across south and central Iraq in April and May. The interim government was confident it would deal with the crisis.

"We have every confidence in our new government, our security forces and our allies to contain this conflict," Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari said.