Fighting in Holy City of Najaf Kills 64

BAGHDAD, Iraq – U.S. troops fought gunbattles with militiamen overnight near the southern holy Shiite city of Najaf, killing 64 gunmen and destroying an anti-aircraft system belonging to the insurgents, the U.S. military said Tuesday.

It was one of the heaviest fights with the militia, as U.S. troops are trying to carefully hike up the pressure on the gunmen loyal to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. U.S. troops moved into a base in Najaf, but promised to stay away from the sensitive Shiite holy sites at the city’s heart.

Meanwhile, as the United Nations prepared to discuss the formation of a caretaker government due to take power on June 30, U.S.-appointed Iraqi leaders complained that the administration will not have real sovereignty as promised by American administrators for months.

“I think the sovereignty will be weak and not complete,” said Mahmoud Othman, a member of the Governing Council. For “the security situation, there will still be the United States.”

He also expressed worries the caretaker will be limited in what laws it can pass. If the government can’t make laws or provide security “it will not be real sovereignty,” he said. “The less sovereignty there is, the less the possibility that the government will be able to work and achieve its tasks.”

U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi has proposed that the Governing Council be dissolved and caretaker government made up of technocrats be created to run Iraq from June 30 until January elections. The United States has said that since Iraqi security forces are still not up to the task of fighting insurgents, U.S. forces will be hold security powers even after the handover.

The battles in the south Monday evening took place on the east side of the Euphrates River, across from Kufa and Najaf, Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said.

The first fight came in the afternoon, when Shiite militiamen opened fire on a U.S. patrol. In the ensuing firefight, seven insurgents were killed. Hours later, a M1 tank was attacked with rocket-propelled grenades. A heavy battle erupted, during which warplanes destroyed an anti-aircraft gun belonging to the militia and 57 gunmen were killed, Kimmitt said.

Night footage taken by the Associated Press Television News, from a throughway between Najaf and the nearby town of Kufa, showed U.S. army helicopters flying low over plumes of smoke rising from an area in the distance amid flashes of gunfire.

In Fallujah, U.S. Marines were pushing ahead with plans to send patrols into the city alongside Iraqi security forces, despite a bloody battle the night before with Sunni insurgents at a mosque. One Marine was killed, and tank fire toppled the mosque’s minaret, from which commanders said the gunmen were firing.

The violence, in which eight Iraqi insurgents were killed, tested the U.S. decision to continue a political track in resolving the Fallujah standoff. On Sunday, the United States backed down from threats to launch a full-scale assault on the city, instead announcing it was extending the fragile cease-fire and would start the patrols.

The battle took place in Fallujah’s Jolan district, a poor neighborhood where insurgents are concentrated. The insurgents fired from the mosque, pinning down a Marine patrol that called in helicopter support in an intense firefight, Marine officials said. At one point, a tank opened fire on the minaret and destroyed it.

A photo of the mosque before the fight, released by the Marines, showed a tall, cylindrical minaret. In an after-photo, also from the Marines, the minaret was completely gone, with rubble on the ground trailing behind what was once its base.

On Tuesday, the city was quiet, with little gunfire heard. Fallujah police chief Sabar al-Janabi met with U.S. military officers Tuesday to discuss the patrols, due to begin Thursday. Armed insurgents were fewer in number on the streets.

An al-Sadr aide in Najaf, Mustaq al-Khafaji, accused the Americans of trying to advance toward Kufa. “We will face the Americans whenever they show up,” he said.

Still, fewer al-Sadr fighters were seen Tuesday on the streets of Najaf and Kufa, where they have been digging in over the past week against a possible American attack.

U.S. authorities have vowed to capture al-Sadr and uproot his militia, the al-Mahdi Army, which launched a bloody uprising at the beginning of April. Al-Mahdi gunmen still dominates the streets of Najaf, Kufa and Karbala.

Soome 2,000 troops are deployed outside Najaf, but the military is having to tread carefully. Najaf is the holiest Shiite city – and any action that even brings the possibility of harm to the Imam Ali Shrine at its heart could turn the limited al-Sadr revolt into a widespread uprising by Iraq’s Shiite majority.

About 200 soldiers on Monday moved into a base that Spanish forces are abandoning in the modern part of the Kufa-Najaf urban area, about six kilometers (three miles) from the Imam Ali Shrine. Al-Sadr is located in his office next to the shrine.

In Baghdad, Bremer heightened warnings about the reported stockpiling of weapons in “mosques, shrines and schools” in Najaf.

“The coalition certainly will not tolerate this situation,” Bremer said in a statement addressed to residents of Najaf. “The restoration of these holy places to calm places of worship must begin immediately.”

Bremer’s spokesman, Dan Senor, would not elaborate on steps the coalition was ready to take to do so. He noted that in the case of military action, “those places of worship are not protected under the Geneva Convention” if they are used to store weapons.

The deaths of two soldiers in Baghdad and the Marine in Fallujah on Monday brought to 114 the number of U.S. troops killed in combat so far this month – nearly as many as the 115 Americans killed during the invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein a year ago.

The two soldiers were killed when a workshop in Baghdad, believed to be producing chemical munitions, exploded in flames moments after U.S. troops broke in to search it on Monday. Two American soldiers were killed and five wounded. Jubilant Iraqis swarmed over the Americans’ charred Humvees, waving looted machine guns, a bandolier and a helmet.

U.S. Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt did not say what sort of chemical agents were suspected of being supplied to insurgents from the Baghdad warehouse. After the blast Monday, there was no sign of precautions against chemicals.

“Chemical munitions could mean any number of things,” including smoke grenades, he said.