Hundreds of rebel Moqtada al-Sadr's supporters, overwhelmed by US firepower, were trapped in Najaf's holy shrine yesterday, hoping the return of Iraq's top Shiite cleric could stop a feared imminent assault on the building.
With American snipers posted on rooftops and firing at anyone who tried to enter or leave the Imam Ali mausoleum, a senior police officer said the three-week battle could be over within hours.
Windows shattered and the mausoleum, one of the most important Shiite Muslim pilgrimage centers in the world, trembled from the force of massive blasts from shells and rockets aimed at Mahdi Army militiamen desperately fighting in the surrounding streets.
Meanwhile, in Fallujah, four people were killed and seven injured, as US planes and tanks pounded suspected insurgent positions in the flashpoint city west of Baghdad, hospital sources in the city said.
In Najaf, Mussa, 21, a militiaman with a black headscarf wrapped around his head, braved the snipers to return to the mosque to pray.
"It is the most dangerous situation I have ever faced. The fighters can no longer leave their positions. They have been driven back," he said.
"I took the risk because I wanted to come and pray. It wouldn't have mattered if I'd been hit, because then I would have died a martyr," he added.
His comrade Ahmed was convinced that the Mahdi Army would win the battle against the US and Iraqi government forces.
"It's true that the American army is trying to surround us, but our fighters have inflicted losses on the enemy," he said inside the shrine, where several hundred people, most of them pilgrims and civilian "human shields" were holed up inside.
To the heavy boom of artillery fire outside and with the sound of Mahdi Army retaliation growing less and less by the hour, medics made an appeal to the Iraqi government for emergency relief.
Doctors in a makeshift clinic, lacking surgeons and blood supplies, told a reporter, one of only three newsmen in the shrine, that at least 30 patients with serious injuries needed immediate evacuation.
Dozens of other wounded civilians were feared trapped in nearby houses, unable to be brought even to the shrine for fear of US sniper and tank fire.
Glass had shattered in the ceiling of part of the prayer room where most of the wounded were laid out under fans, moaning in pain on blood-stained blankets.
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