US forces killed dozens of Iraqi fighters near Najaf overnight, hours after Washington issued an ultimatum to a radical cleric to clear his militia from mosques in the holy city.
Local television in Najaf said wounded people were dying for lack of blood supplies and issued an urgent appeal for donors.
The clashes were the deadliest since Moqtada al-Sadr and his Mehdi Army militia launched a brief revolt against the US-led occupation three weeks ago. They may mark a new phase in American efforts to dislodge him from Najaf, where he has taken refuge among some of the holiest shrines of Shiite Islam.
Forty-three militiamen were killed, a US official said. An AC-130 gunship -- a massive plane that spews cannon fire across wide areas -- destroyed an anti-aircraft system, she added.
Locals said aircraft had destroyed a militia checkpoint outside Kufa, 10km from Najaf, after a firefight. Staff at two nearby hospitals counted at least 23 dead and 34 wounded. Some of the casualties did not appear to be guerrillas.
As they prepared to bury the dead in the afternoon, local people said they were anxious about what might happen next.
Adding to the US burden, Spanish troops quit Najaf as part of a withdrawal decided by the new government in Madrid, where opposition to the occupation runs high. American troops have been forced to take their place.
In a second flashpoint, the Sunni Muslim town of Fallujah, local police took to the streets in force yesterday as a deadline expired for guerrillas to hand in heavy weapons.
The US Marines, who have besieged the town for three weeks, had said they would join police on patrols as early as yesterday. But they did not, and Iraqi police said there would be talks today on the joint patrols.
Hundreds of Iraqis have died in Fallujah, along with many Americans, in one of the bloodiest conflicts in a year.
Washington is struggling to douse these twin challenges to the new order in Baghdad without inflaming anger at civilian casualties before the US authority hands formal sovereignty back to an appointed Iraqi government on June 30.
Najaf and Fallujah have provided acid tests among Iraq's two main Muslim communities.
The long oppressed Shiite majority broadly welcomed the US invasion that overthrew Saddam Hussein, a Sunni. But impatience with disruption to daily life has angered many -- though support for Sadr's armed response has been mixed.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell said on Monday that US forces would have to maintain considerable powers after the handover, "which in some ways infringes on what some would call full sovereignty."
In Fallujah, US commanders say they face up to 2,000 fighters -- some diehard Saddam loyalists, others trying to reassert Sunni dominance of Iraq, and maybe about 200 foreign Islamic radicals, some possibly linked to al-Qaeda.
The Americans are in no hurry to spark an all-out confrontation in the town, 50km west of Baghdad, but hold out little hope the insurgents will surrender their arms.
Witnesses said US forces had fought guerrillas beside a highway north of Fallujah for around an hour early yesterday.
On Monday, Marines called in air strikes after skirmishes around a mosque left eight insurgents and a soldier dead.
Civilian casualties and the sight of refugees fleeing the city of 300,000 have dismayed many Iraqis. The US offensive began in response to the murder of four American contractors.
Also See Story:
Iraqi government must give troops free hand: Powell
AGING: As of last month, people aged 65 or older accounted for 20.06 percent of the total population and the number of couples who got married fell by 18,685 from 2024 Taiwan has surpassed South Korea as the country least willing to have children, with an annual crude birthrate of 4.62 per 1,000 people, Ministry of the Interior data showed yesterday. The nation was previously ranked the second-lowest country in terms of total fertility rate, or the average number of children a woman has in her lifetime. However, South Korea’s fertility rate began to recover from 2023, with total fertility rate rising from 0.72 and estimated to reach 0.82 to 0.85 by last year, and the crude birthrate projected at 6.7 per 1,000 people. Japan’s crude birthrate was projected to fall below six,
US President Donald Trump in an interview with the New York Times published on Thursday said that “it’s up to” Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) what China does on Taiwan, but that he would be “very unhappy” with a change in the “status quo.” “He [Xi] considers it to be a part of China, and that’s up to him what he’s going to be doing, but I’ve expressed to him that I would be very unhappy if he did that, and I don’t think he’ll do that. I hope he doesn’t do that,” Trump said. Trump made the comments in the context
SELF-DEFENSE: Tokyo has accelerated its spending goal and its defense minister said the nation needs to discuss whether it should develop nuclear-powered submarines China is ramping up objections to what it sees as Japan’s desire to acquire nuclear weapons, despite Tokyo’s longstanding renunciation of such arms, deepening another fissure in the two neighbors’ increasingly tense ties. In what appears to be a concerted effort, China’s foreign and defense ministries issued statements on Thursday condemning alleged remilitarism efforts by Tokyo. The remarks came as two of the country’s top think tanks jointly issued a 29-page report framing actions by “right-wing forces” in Japan as posing a “serious threat” to world peace. While that report did not define “right-wing forces,” the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs was
PREPAREDNESS: Given the difficulty of importing ammunition during wartime, the Ministry of National Defense said it would prioritize ‘coproduction’ partnerships A newly formed unit of the Marine Corps tasked with land-based security operations has recently replaced its aging, domestically produced rifles with more advanced, US-made M4A1 rifles, a source said yesterday. The unnamed source familiar with the matter said the First Security Battalion of the Marine Corps’ Air Defense and Base Guard Group has replaced its older T65K2 rifles, which have been in service since the late 1980s, with the newly received M4A1s. The source did not say exactly when the upgrade took place or how many M4A1s were issued to the battalion. The confirmation came after Chinese-language media reported
RSS