As with the last threads, updates will be at the top of the page with previous posts in the extended entry below. For the three earlier threads click
here,
here and
here.
Update [2004-8-23 12:23:4 by mitch2k2]:Probably the last update of this thread. I'll undoubtedly be starting another, though, as it looks as though
the offensive is back on:
U.S. marines and Shi'ite militiamen fought fierce battles around a shrine in the Iraqi city of Najaf on Monday in some of the heaviest fighting since the 20-day-old rebellion erupted.
At least 15 explosions, many sounding like artillery shells, rocked the area near the Imam Ali mosque, where the Mehdi Army fighters of radical Shi'ite Muslim cleric Moqtada al-Sadr have holed up in defiance of the U.S.-backed interim government.
Gunfire echoed through the alleyways near the shrine while U.S. tanks kept up their encirclement around the city's heart.
Shrapnel fell in the courtyard of the gold-domed mosque, whose outer walls have already been slightly damaged in fighting that has killed hundreds and driven oil prices to record highs.
There's some scattered reports of US forces raiding the cemetary, but am looking for confirmation on that.
Update [2004-8-23 10:38:14 by mitch2k2]: In the words of the headline from this Guardian UK story, the "
Battle Rages on in Najaf." Also some specific details of the damage to the mosque from last night and comments from Iranian president, Mohammad Khatami:
Explosions and gunfire shook Najaf again today as US forces continued to battle militants sheltering in one of Shia Islam's holiest shrines.
Militia members loyal to the Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr remain in control of the Imam Ali mosque despite protracted negotiations over a peaceful handover of the shrine to religious authorities.
Damage to intricate tiling on one of the shrine's outer walls was visible this morning after the latest fighting. At least three people were killed and 18 injured overnight, according to Tawfiq Mohammed of Najaf general hospital.
For more than an hour today militants fired mortars at US troops, who responded with artillery, residents said; late yesterday US warplanes and helicopters attacked positions in Najaf's old city for the second night, according to witnesses.
The US military said it had fired on sites from where militants were shooting, south of the shrine, and had not hit the compound wall.
The clashes in Najaf yesterday appeared more intense than those of recent days as US forces sealed off the old city. [...]
[...]Senior government officials last week said an Iraqi force was preparing to raid the shrine within hours to break the Mahdi army's grip on Najaf, but Iraq's interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, quickly stepped back from that threat.
Such an operation would anger Shia across the country, possibly turning them against the new government as it tries to gain legitimacy and tackle the 16-month-old insurgency.
The potential for Shia anger was made all the more apparent today when the Iranian president, Mohammad Khatami, said Iraq's interim government risked losing popular support because of its backing for military operations in Najaf.
Both US and Iraqi officials have accused Iran, an old enemy of Iraq, of stirring up tensions among Iraq's Shia community.
Mr Khatami told reporters the fighting was unjustified since Mr Sadr's militia had shown it was willing to reach a negotiated settlement.
"It seems there is a desire to crack down on Najaf and scare all Iraqis," the official IRNA news agency quoted Mr Khatami as saying.
"It was Falluja yesterday; today it is Najaf, and if the trend continues it will spread to all Iraqis."
Update [2004-8-23 0:50:3 by mitch2k2]: The Iraqi "interim" government is once again hurling ultimatums at al Sadr. I think they realize that they've ultimatum'd themselves into a corner now, too, and there's a chance that may translate into bold and clumsy, bloody moves.
Iraqi Minister of State Kasim Daoud summoned reporters to the prime minister's villa inside the secure Green Zone and announced that the government was a "few hours" from starting military action to oust militia members from the Imam Ali mosque.
Al-Sadr's followers have been holed up there since Aug. 5.
"We mean it, and still we are counting the hours," Daoud said, urging al-Sadr to evacuate his followers from the mosque and accept a demand that his militia disarm.
But it was unclear how soon an attack on the mosque might be.
With the young Shiite cleric and the fledgling government locked in a test of wills, each has alternated between tough talk and gestures of conciliation. The government has twice before announced a raid was hours away, only to back down.
The protracted standoff challenges the legitimacy of the interim Iraqi regime. But an attack on the shrine risks provoking a broader uprising among Iraq's majority Shiite population. The mosque is one of Islam's holiest sites, containing the burial place of Ali, the son-in-law of the Prophet Muhammad and a figure especially revered by Shiites.
[editor's note, by mitch2k2] Please recommend if you'd like to see this stay on the front page.
Keep checking back, page will be updated throughout the day. And for even more, on this and other topics, be sure to visit
The Thorn Papers.
Update [2004-8-23 0:5:22 by mitch2k2]:Some recap of Sunday's battles from Canadian
CTV. After referencing the Reuters piece I posted earlier, the report goes on to add htese details:
Just before news came of the hit on the mosque itself, there were reports of a four blasts in Najaf as a U.S. military plane circled overhead.
The aerial assault came after U.S. tanks moved to within 800 metres of the shrine earlier in the day.
Al-Sadr fighters mortared a police station, and U.S. troops and fighters had clashed through the morning.
In the afternoon, militants attacked U.S. forces with mortars, prompting another round of clashes that lasted for around a half hour.
At least three people were killed and 18 injured during fighting overnight, said Tawfiq Mohammed of Najaf General Hospital.
From the same piece, the daily list of events (some redundancy to earlier posts, but offered in the interest of synopsis):
Also in Iraq:
- U.S. journalist Micah Garen, who was kidnapped in Iraq more than a
week ago, was released in the southern city of Nasiriyah. Garen thanked
al-Sadr's representatives in Nasiriyah and everyone else who worked to
secure his release.
- Four U.S. Marines were been killed in separate incidents in Iraq's volatile Anbar province, the military announced.
- Two people died and 14 others were injured in a car bombing in the
town of Khalis. Among those injured was a deputy provincial governor
and seven of his bodyguards.
- Two policemen died in Jur al-Nadaf when attackers machine gunned their vehicle.
- The body of a kidnapped Iraqi intelligence officer was found in
Basra. Abdul Jawad was kidnapped nearly a week ago and threatened with
death if U.S. and Iraqi forces did not end the violence in Najaf.
- Two children were injured when a car bomb detonated near a U.S. convoy outside Mosul.
- One person was injured when asailants fired two mortar shells into the center of Baghdad.
- Guards at a prison in Amarah helped 82 prisoners - all common criminals - escape early Sunday, a prison official said.
Update [2004-8-22 21:51:10 by mitch2k2]:Don't know how I missed this earlier in the day, but Reuters (the wire service that seems to have the most frequent reporting coming out of Najaf)
reports that according to an advisor to Sadr, US fire has damaged the outer wall of the shrine of Imam Ali:
A senior commander of Shi'ite militants holed up inside a Najaf shrine said the wall of the mosque was hit by U.S. fire on Sunday night.
Sheikh Ahmed al-Sheibani, who is also a top adviser to radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, said it was hit during fighting.
It was not immediately possible to confirm the accusation independently. Serious damage to the shrine would enrage millions of Shi'ites around the world and give Sadr political ammunition in his rebellion against U.S. troops.
Well dang. Tanks moving into position around the shrine, US troops yesterday doing mock runs of an offensive on the Mahdi Army....
Update [2004-8-22 20:34:32 by mitch2k2]:I love
The Guardian UK. For a bit of perspective on what these last few, and next few days
mean, and their potential historical context, consider this:
It may seem foolhardy to assert that the entire modern history of a complex military and political situation in a large and unstable place like Iraq rests on the resolution of one relatively small stand-off in a single town.
But it is increasingly necessary to see Najaf in that manner. Its potential to affect everything else grows by the day, especially because it is the focus of so many eyes, Iraqi and non-Iraqi alike.
Najaf is no longer merely a confrontation between US troops and Moqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi militia.
It has also become the place where the world outlook of Iraq's majority Shia population could be settled for perhaps a generation.
This weekend that crucial issue continued to hang in the balance.
But the stakes are very high. If the Mehdi army finally forces the Americans and their surrogates, the Baghdad government, to back away from the holy city, then al-Sadr will have proved that his guns and implacability can achieve effects that the caution and diplomacy of the older and more moderate Shia leadership answerable to Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani have failed to match.
But this is not a good enough reason for crushing al-Sadr. If the Americans, acting on behalf of Ayad Allawi's interim regime in Baghdad, contrive to destroy the holy places, to kill al-Sadr and his band, or, perhaps most misguided of all, if they deal out summary justice to a surrendering militia, then it will not merely be the people of southern Iraq who will have to live with the consequences for decades to come.
It could be all of us. In circumstances like Najaf, it is worth remembering a little history.
It was not so much what Patrick Pearce and his comrades did in Dublin in 1916 that set the agenda of 20th century Ireland; it was what the British did to them once the rising was over.
Once created, martyrs are hard to unmake.
First Post O' The Thread
First, the Good news. Thank God. At least we have one life spared. Micah Garen has been released by his captors. Reuters is reporting:
U.S. journalist Micah Garen was on Sunday freed by an Iraqi group who had held him hostage in the southern Iraqi city of Nassiriya.
"I am very grateful to everyone who worked to protect me and guarantee my release and I thank my friends in Nassiriya and my family and fiance who spent three months with me in Nassiriya," Garen told Arab satellite television Al Jazeera by telephone.
He was speaking from the Nassiriya office of rebel Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.
"Today he was brought to the office of Sheikh Sadr in Nassiriya and he is now there. We have called the human rights body in Nassiriya to come and receive him," Aws al-Khafaji, an aide to Sadr, told Al Jazeera.
Otherwise, unfortunately, Monday in Najaf began as did Sunday, with Reuters reporting that AC-130s have again been pounding rebel positions:
A U.S. AC-130 gunship unleashed a series of fierce air attacks on positions held by Shi'ite rebels in Najaf early on Monday, Reuters witnesses said.
The attacks sent white flashes skywards on the northern edge of an area housing a sacred shrine where militants are holed up.
Dozens of cannon rounds were fired as the plane continued circling over Najaf.
The aircraft armed with a chain machinegun, howitzer and a cannon went into action after U.S. tanks earlier advanced within 800 meters of the Imam Ali shrine that is sacred to millions of Shi'ite Muslims around the world.
Another report on the tanks moving into position around the shrine:
A fresh gunbattle erupted in the darkness near the Imam Ali mosque, whose wall a senior militia commander said was hit by U.S. fire. Serious damage could enrage millions of Shi'ites.
With talks aimed at ending the siege stalled, U.S. forces appeared to tighten their noose around the old city, stronghold of rebels loyal to radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.
Near Najaf, clashes between U.S. troops and militias on Saturday killed 40 people in the town of Kufa, a Shi'ite Muslim bastion from where Sadr has led Friday prayers. Interior Ministry officials said the dead were militias and civilians.
In volatile Anbar province, three U.S. marines were killed in action on Saturday, the U.S. military said in a statement. Since the start of the war last year to oust Saddam Hussein, 714 American troops have been killed in action.
Rounds of heavy-caliber fire from armored vehicles rattled across the labyrinth of narrow streets that lead to the gold-domed mosque in Najaf, where Mehdi militias remain holed up in defiance of a government demand they disband and leave.
A Reuters witness said U.S. tanks advanced to their closest positions to the shrine since the siege began and drew mortar fire from Mehdi militias.
Looks like it may be a busy night. More as it comes.