Iraqi troops advance on Shiite shrine

Najaf’s Shiite uprising appeared to be weakening today as Iraqi forces moved to within 200 yards of the revered Imam Ali Shrine.

Iraq’s defence minister once again demanded fighters loyal to a radical cleric surrender or face a violent raid.

The militant force, which once waged fierce battles with US troops throughout the Old City and Najaf’s vast cemetery, seemed considerably diminished in number and less aggressive yesterday after days of US air strikes and relentless artillery pounding.

But, in Baghdad, attackers bombed the convoys of two government ministers in separate attacks that killed five people and a suicide bomber, but left the ministers unharmed.

Hundreds of militants have been spotted leaving Najaf in recent days, witnesses said. Those that remained appeared to have pulled back to the area around the shrine, where yesterday’s fighting was concentrated, US troops said.

Police say radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who has not been seen in public for days, has fled the city.

His aides, however, vigorously denied that, saying al-Sadr was in a secret hideout. Regardless, the fiery, charismatic cleric’s absence from the battlefield may have withered his followers’ morale.

US warplanes bombed the Old City for the third night in a row, witnesses reported. Huge blasts rumbled throughout the city for about 10 minutes, followed by gun battles and smaller explosions.

Earlier in the day, fierce fighting broke out near the shrine compound, with rockets launched from US helicopters kicking up clouds of smoke and debris.

Bradley fighting vehicles patrolling the nearly deserted, bullet-scarred streets attacked militants, who responded with mortar fire and rocket-propelled grenades.

Iraqi forces, accompanying US troops into the Old City for the first time in recent days, combed through the neighbourhood, approaching as close as 200 yards to the shrine, controlled by militants loyal to al-Sadr.

Both the Iraqi government and the US military say no military moves are being made without the approval of interim prime minister Ayad Allawi.

Defence minister Hazem Shaalan, addressing Iraqi National Guard troops in Najaf, said yesterday that Iraqi forces would head towards the shrine “tonight” to await the signal for a raid or the capitulation of the militants.

“When your brothers approach the holy shrine compound, they will direct calls of mercy to those (militants) to surrender,” Shaalan told the troops. “They have hours to surrender.”

But by last night there was no indication Iraqi forces had advanced on the shrine.

Shaalan made a similar threat a week ago, saying the government could raid the shrine by the end of the day last Wednesday to free it of “its vile occupation”. The government later backed down and said it would work for a peaceful solution.

Any raid on the shrine, the holiest Shiite site in the country, risked igniting a massive Shiite rebellion throughout Iraq against the fledgling interim government, already battling a persistent and bloody Sunni uprising.

“I tell Shaalan to throw his new declaration in the same garbage that he already threw his earlier declarations in,” al-Sadr aide Sheikh Aws al-Khafaji told Al-Jazeera television.

But other al-Sadr lieutenants repeated their appeal for talks, a request the government has repeatedly rejected.

In southern Baghdad, a car bomb exploded in the Qadisiyah neighbourhood as environment minister Miskhat Moumin was passing through in a convoy, ministry spokeswoman Dalal Ali said.

Moumin escaped unharmed.

Four bodyguards were killed in that blast and two other people were injured, interior ministry spokesman Colonel Adnan Abdul-Rahman said. A suicide bomber was also killed.

In a second attack at about the same time in the western Baghdad district of al-Khadra, a roadside bomb exploded beside Education Minister Sami Mudhafar’s convoy, killing one of his bodyguards and wounding two others, police said.

The convoy was heading to work at the time and the minister was not injured, a bodyguard who survived the attack said.

In other violence, clashes between British forces and al-Sadr militants in the southern city of Amarah killed eight people and injured 18 others, said Dr Saad Hemood, of the Zahrawi General Hospital.

The fighting started when militants attacked a British foot patrol with small arms and fired mortar rounds at a building housing British troops, residents said.

Residents said British warplanes bombed the city, but Squadron Leader Spike Wilson, a British military spokesman, said no planes were used in Amarah and he had no reports of coalition casualties.