NAJAF, Iraq – Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr ordered his fighters Thursday to hand control of a revered Najaf shrine to top religious authorities, hours after U.S. forces bombed militant positions and Iraq’s prime minister made a “final call” for the cleric’s militia to surrender.
Blasts and gunbattles persisted throughout the day Thursday in the streets of Najaf, where militants bombarded a police station with mortar rounds, killing seven police and injuring 35 others. At night, at least 30 explosions shook the Old City as a U.S. plane hit militant targets east of the Imam Ali shrine.
U.S. forces also battled al-Sadr’s supporters in a Baghdad slum, where militants said five fighters and five civilians were killed. Also, late Thursday, an American warplane bombed targets in the Sunni city of Fallujah, 40 miles west of Baghdad.
Insurgents fired back mortars toward a U.S. base as calls of “God is great” and Quranic verses blared from the loudspeakers of Fallujah’s mosques. U.S. forces have routinely bombed targets in the city it says are strongholds of Sunni insurgents believed responsible for violence against coalition troops, Iraqi forces and civilians.
Militants elsewhere in Iraq fired mortars at U.S. Embassy offices in the capital, injuring one American, and threatened to kill two hostages, a Turkish worker and a U.S. journalist.
In a speech, interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi had warned al-Sadr to disarm his forces and withdraw from the shrine after his government threatened to send a massive Iraqi force to root them out.
Defying that ultimatum, al-Sadr sent a telephone text message vowing to seek “martyrdom or victory,” and his jubilant followers inside the shrine danced and chanted.
Later in the day, a top al-Sadr aide said the cleric had ordered his militia to relinquish control of the shrine where they have been holed up for two weeks fighting Iraqi and U.S. forces. But in a letter shown by the Arab television station Al-Arabiya, al-Sadr said he would not disband his Al Mahdi Army.
The violence in the holy city between the insurgents and a combined U.S.-Iraqi force has angered many in Iraq’s Shiite majority and proven a major challenge to Allawi’s fledgling interim government as it tries to build credibility and prove it is not a U.S. puppet.
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