Shi'ite militia attack on Najaf police station 'ends ceasefire'

SHI'ITE gunmen seized a police station in Najaf yesterday in the first outbreak of fighting since an agreement to end weeks of bloody clashes between US troops and militia forces.

Four Iraqis were killed and 13 were injured, hospital and militia officials said.

Gunmen loyal to radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr took control of the Ghari police station just 250 yards from the Imam Ali Shrine, witness Mohammed Hussein said. The station was looted and police cars were burned.

"We sent a quick-reaction unit to assist the policemen defending the station, but they were overwhelmed by al-Sadr fighters," Najaf governor Adnan al-Zurufi said.

US forces were not involved in the clashes, and it was unclear whether the violence marked the end of the ceasefire in Najaf, mediated by Shi'ite leaders and al-Sadr's militia, or resulted from police attempts to crack down on petty crime in the city.

Police and witnesses said trouble started when authorities tried to arrest some suspected thieves at the bus station near the main police headquarters.

Masked attackers responded with machinegun fire and rocket-propelled grenades near the headquarters building. One gunman was killed when police returned fire.

Fighting later moved to the second police station.

Al-Sadr spokesman Qais al-Khazali said he was trying to intervene and stop the violence. "We are trying to convince them to stop shooting. We are still committed to the truce," al-Khazali said.

Two of the four dead were al-Mahdi fighters, and several others were injured, al-Khazali said.

Last week, al-Sadr agreed to send his fighters home and pull back from the Islamic shrines in Najaf and its twin city of Kufa, handing over security to Iraqi police. The US Army also agreed to stay away from the holy sites. The clashes illustrate the chaotic situation in Iraq ahead of the transfer of sovereignty in June.

In a sign of the ongoing threat, saboteurs blew up a key oil pipeline on Wednesday, forcing a 10% cut on the national power grid as demand for electricity rises with the advent of Iraq's broiling summer heat.

As world leaders applauded their newfound unity in passing a UN Security Council resolution on Iraqi sovereignty, Iraq's Kurdish leaders protested that the US and Britain refused to include an endorsement of the interim constitution in the UN resolution.

Kurds were fearful they will be sidelined politically by the Shi'ite Arab majority, despite assurances from Prime Minister Iyad Allawi and others the new government would stick by its commitments for communal rights.

At the Group of Eight summit at Sea Island, Georgia, French President Jacques Chirac told reporters: "I won't hide that I don't think it is NATO's purpose to intervene in Iraq."