US Marines backed by tanks and aircraft seized the heart of the holy Iraqi city of Najaf yesterday in a major assault on Shiite rebels, but they kept out of a site sacred to millions of Shiites around the world.
Warplanes and attack helicopters pounded militia positions in a cemetery near the Imam Ali Mosque, igniting protests in at least two other cities as an uprising that has killed hundreds across southern and central Iraq entered its second week.
PHOTO: REUTERS
The assault against the Mehdi Army of radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and growing anger among the majority Shiite community could spark a firestorm for interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi should holy sites be damaged or the death toll escalate.
Thick black smoke poured into the sky as helicopters skimmed mud-brick rooftops in the heart of Najaf. Soon after midday, Marines controlled the city center and had blocked entry to the mosque, one of Shiite Islam's holiest sites, a witness said.
In the southeastern city of Kut, at least 72 people were killed in US air raids and fighting between Iraqi police and the Mehdi Army yesterday, the Health Ministry said.
It said 25 people were killed in clashes in Baghdad and 21 in other cities in the past 24 hours. There were no immediate casualty figures from the Najaf offensive.
Protests broke out in Baghdad and the southern city of Basra after the offensive began, aimed at crushing the heart of a radical Shiite Muslim rebellion that has hit seven cities.
The US military said the assault would exclude the Imam Ali Mosque. A spokesman for Iraq's Interior Ministry told CNN that Iraqi forces alone would disarm militia holed up inside.
But the Mehdi Army raised the prospect of a bloody battle, vowing no surrender and saying Sadr was leading the defence at the shrine and vast cemetery, one of the Middle East's largest.
"The morale of the fighters is very high," said Ahmed al-Shibani, a senior Sadr spokesman in Najaf.
US Marines made clear their intentions, broadcasting a message in Arabic from Humvees that said: "To the residents of Najaf: Coalition forces are purging the city of the Mehdi Army."
A threat by Sadr's militia kept a main southern oil export pipeline shut on Thursday although crews had repaired it after sabotage stopped operations for three days, an official said.
A senior official from Sadr's Mehdi Army, Sheikh Asaad al-Basri, had warned that militiamen would blow up pipelines in the south if US forces tried to storm their Najaf bases.
Militiamen responded to the American assault in Najaf with rocket-propelled grenades and mortar bombs, firing at times from inside the walls of the Imam Ali Mosque.
Witnesses said thousands of civilians fled the centre of the southern city. The US military said the figure was much lower. Some residents escaped on carts pulled by donkeys and by late morning many streets were deserted.
Analysts warned of a backlash even if the shrine was undamaged and the militia beaten in Najaf. They said resentment could fester and pose long-term consequences for Allawi, who has said nothing publicly on the crisis since Sunday.
Some 2,000 US servicemen and 1,800 Iraq security men are deployed around Najaf, a city of 600,000 about 160km south of Baghdad.
As news of the offensive filtered in, thousands of Shiites took to the streets in Basra and a Baghdad district to protest.
"Long live Sadr, America and Allawi are infidels," thousands of protesters in Basra chanted. A similar protest took place in Baghdad's Shiite neighbourhood of Kadhimiyah.
A photographer said he had seen dozens of dead militiamen in civilian houses in Najaf. He said the bodies had been taken from the battle zone and covered in ice to preserve them before burial. It was unclear when they had been killed.
Iraq's most influential Shiite cleric, who is in London undergoing medical treatment, called for the holy city of Najaf, his hometown, to be respected, an aide said.
"Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani is pained and very sad about what is happening in holy Najaf," Murtada al-Kashmiri told reporters.
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