A spokesman for rebel leader Moqtada al-Sadr yesterday expressed surprise at threats of an imminent attack on his militia by Iraqi forces, saying the Shiite cleric had agreed to demands made by peace mediators.
"We are surprised by the declaration and threat by the minister of defense ... because we have given our full accord to the initiative presented by the delegation," Ahmed Shibani said on al-Jazeera television.
Defense Minister Hazem al-Shaalan vowed earlier yesterday that a "decisive" battle would be launched against al-Sadr's militiamen, who he said must surrender within hours in the central holy city of Najaf, where heavy fighting raged earlier in the day.
"The coming hours will be decisive and we will teach them a lesson they will never forget," Shaalan told a news conference on a visit to Najaf, flanked by the holy city's governor Adnan al-Zorfi.
US-led Iraqi government forces have been locked in a standoff with al-Sadr's Mehdi Army for nearly two weeks.
"In the coming hours they must surrender," Shaalan said, stressing that Iraqi troops were making the "final military preparations" should the militiamen not lay down their weapons.
"The Mehdi Army should be dissolved and Moqtada al-Sadr brought before the prime minister, who is the one to decide what Moqtada al-Sadr's fate should be," he added.
In Baghdad, Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said the government was determined to restore security in Najaf as soon as possible.
"The Iraqi government will not sit idly by in the face of this insurgency, but it is serious about restoring security and stability in the holy city as soon as possible," said a statement issued by his office.
Shaalan earlier told al-Arabiya television that a "decisive" battle would be unleashed later yesterday to wipe al-Sadr's militia out of Najaf.
"Today will witness a decisive battle against Sadr followers," that would "crush the Mehdi Army and force them out of the city" of Najaf, he told the pan-Arab television station.
"Only Iraqis will enter the mausoleum. There will not be an American intervention" inside the shrine, he said.
"The American intervention will only be through cover from the air and some ways leading to the mausoleum, but the entrance into the mausoleum will be 100 percent Iraqi," he said.
Shaalan said "we have trained our sons from the National Guards to lead the assault [into the mausoleum], and God willing, it will be completed in a few hours."
US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on Tuesday the Americans were "unlikely" to storm the mausoleum, which would antagonize Shiites across the region.
One day after al-Sadr's apparent snub of peace delegates from a key national conference in Baghdad who braved the violence to visit the holy Imam Ali shrine in Najaf, where al-Sadr's forces are holed up, Zorfi was pessimistic about peace.
"I think that options for peace have narrowed," he told the news conference.
Earlier yesterday, US troops, backed by helicopter gunships, pounded militia bastions in Najaf's Old City.
A mortar round slammed into a busy market in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul yesterday, killing at least six civilians, the US military and hospital officials said. Twenty-three people were wounded in the 1pm attack, officials said.
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