NAJAF, Iraq – Thousands of U.S. troops sealed off Najaf’s vast cemetery, its old city and a revered Shiite shrine Thursday and unleashed a tank, infantry and helicopter assault against militants loyal to Muqtada al-Sadr. Arab television reported the cleric was wounded and holed up in the shrine.
It was impossible to confirm whether al-Sadr was in fact wounded or know how serious his reported wounds were. Both Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya quoted one of the cleric’s aides, Ahmed al-Shaibany, as saying he was wounded during the clashes and inside the shrine compound.
Al-Sadr has vowed to fight “until the last drop of my blood has been spilled.” Troops also stormed the radical cleric’s home, but he was not there.
As billows of black smoke drifted across Najaf amid the clatter of military helicopters, gunmen in a house near the shrine shot at U.S. forces patrolling the 5-square-mile cemetery. Militants hiding in the cemetery took fire from the Apaches and from American soldiers crawling on the roofs of single-story buildings. When the gunships turned away, the insurgents in the graveyard shot back.
As the day began, the military trumpeted the operation as the beginning of a major assault on al-Sadr’s fighters.
“Major operations to destroy the militia have begun,” said Maj. David Holahan, executive officer of the 1st Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment.
Later Thursday, a spokesman for the top Marine command in Iraq, Lt. Col. T.V. Johnson, said that although there was some fighting and some Najaf residents have fled the city, the combat has been “sporadic and there have been no major engagements” with the militiamen.
Nevertheless, the offensive threatened to inflame Iraq’s Shiite majority – especially if the fighting damages the shrine – and presented the biggest test yet for interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, a secular Shiite who is trying to crush the violence plaguing the country while working to persuade Iraqis of the legitimacy of his unelected government.
Allawi appealed to the militants to give up their arms and leave the Imam Ali shrine, which holds the remains of the exalted Shia saint Ali and where the insurgents have holed up during the last week of fighting here.
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