KUFA, April 16: Blasts shook the town of Kufa on Friday after militiamen loyal to anti-US leader Moqtada Sadr said they had ambushed a convoy of vehicles from an American force that is building up nearby.
Hospital sources said at least five people were killed in the Kufa fighting and 20 wounded, most of them seriously. In Najaf, Iraq's highest Shia religious authority warned US troops not to enter holy cities in their pursuit of Sadr's Mehdi Army.
Moqtada Sadr appeared in public for the first time in two weeks at Kufa's grand mosque, on the outskirts of Najaf, warning US forces massed in a desert area nearby that they are "forbidden" to enter holy cities.
"We will not allow the forces of occupation to enter Najaf and the holy sites because they are forbidden places for them," said Moqtada Sadr in a fiery Friday sermon. "I say that they are here to stay and will occupy us for many years and as such compromise will not work."
Moqtada Sadr said he would not disband his militia under any circumstances "because I did not create it on my own but with the cooperation of the Iraqi people". As Sadr spoke, scores of his banned Mehdi Army militiamen milled outside brandishing Kalashnikov assault rifles and missile launchers.
There was no comment from the US forces that have reinforced Spanish and Polish soldiers in the area around Najaf. Polish officers commanding international troops in the Najaf region were unhappy at the prospect of an assault on the holy city by 2,500 US troops poised outside, Polish media said.
Lebanon's top Shia leader said on Friday Washington would fan fury across the Muslim world if it invaded Najaf or attacked Sadr. "All of this will set the ground burning beneath their feet, not just in Iraq, but in the whole of the Islamic world," Grand Ayatollah Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah said in his Friday sermon.
TAKEN HOSTAGE: A US soldier missing since an attack last week on a US fuel convoy west of Baghdad is being held hostage in Iraq and US military officials have seen a videotape of him, the US television network ABC reported. -Reuters/AFP
