US forces tightened their grip around one of Iraq's holiest cities yesterday, and the rebel Shiite cleric they have vowed to kill or capture offered peace terms to spare Najaf a bloodbath.
An envoy appointed by Moqtada al-Sadr said the wanted cleric had asked him to convey peace proposals to the Americans.
The 2,500-strong Third Brigade Task Force, along with Spanish and Polish troops, set up what US officers called an exclusion zone around Najaf and sent out reconnaissance patrols from Forward Operating Base Duke, 20km west of the city.
PHOTO: EPA
The Najaf buildup was proceeding hours after US President George W. Bush vowed to stay the course in Iraq and said a June 30 handover to Iraqi sovereignty would go ahead.
"Sayyed Moqtada made positive proposals to end the crisis. I cannot disclose the details. He realizes that an armed confrontation is not in anybody's interest," Sadr's envoy, Abdelkarim al-Anzi, now in Baghdad, said by telephone.
Anzi said he had met Sadr in Najaf on Tuesday.
The US military has branded Sadr an outlaw and pledged to kill or capture the cleric, who has taken refuge near Najaf's Imam Ali shrine, sacred to the world's Shiite Muslims.
As tension mounted in Najaf, Iraqi mediators said they had extended a shaky truce in the embattled Sunni town of Fallujah for 48 hours from 9am yesterday.
But violence flared in Baghdad, where US soldiers fired on looters raiding a military truck previously ambushed on the airport road. A photographer said he saw several Iraqis lying motionless and bleeding after the shooting.
Four people were killed and six wounded in the northern city of Mosul when a Katyusha rocket, aimed at a police station, hit a civilian area, police and hospital officials said.
Tension was also running high in Najaf's sister city of Kerbala, where residents said streets were empty amid fears of clashes between Sadr's militia and US-led forces.
Bulgaria said its troops in the shrine city had come under fire during the night. They took no casualties in the attacks on a patrol and on their base, the Defence Ministry in Sofia said.
Bush said his generals, who have asked for two more brigades -- about 10,000 troops -- to be sent to Iraq, would get them.
The revolt, which took US officials by surprise, came as insurgents from the smaller Sunni Muslim community, to which former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein belongs, responded to a military crackdown in central Iraq by taking on US Marines in street battles.
Hundreds of Iraqis have been killed this monht, already the deadliest month for the US military since Saddam's fall a year ago, with 83 Americans killed in two weeks of combat.
US Marines fought Sunni insurgents in Fallujah overnight and witnesses said four civilians and two fighters were killed, but negotiators extended a truce for 48 hours.
Hospitals would be resupplied, amenities would be repaired and civilians who fled the fighting could return.
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