US preparing 'final' assault on Najaf: Militia threatens to blow up pipelines
NAJAF, Aug 11: US marines said on Wednesday they were preparing a final assault on Shia militia in Najaf, after radical leader Moqtada Sadr ordered his men to keep fighting even if he was killed.
A leader of Sadr's Mehdi Army in Basra threatened to blow up the country's oil pipelines in the south if US forces attack the holy city. "If the US forces attacked Najaf tonight, we will blow up the oil pipelines," Sheikh Asaad al Basri, the chief of the Mehdi Army in Basra, said.
The New York Times said that after preparing for a major attack on militia loyal to Moqtada Sadr on Wednesday, US forces called it off as it was about to begin. But it said officials described the move as a postponement and said the attack could go ahead any time.
As a bloody showdown loomed between US troops and the Mehdi Army in Najaf, thousands of Moqtada Sadr's supporters vented their anger against interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi in the streets of Nassiriya and several other cities.
In Nassiriya, one of seven cities where a Shia uprising has taken hold in the past week, demonstrators torched Mr Allawi's political party office and called for his downfall.
Workers at an oil pumping station in Nassiriya said they had stopped operations to protest at Mr Allawi's backing of the US offensive in Najaf. The station had cut supplies of refined products and liquefied petroleum gas to Baghdad, the workers said.
The US warning in Najaf came as sporadic clashes between American troops and the militia echoed from the heart of the southern city, where hundreds have been killed or wounded around some of Iraq's holiest sites.
"Iraqi and US forces are making final preparations as we get ready to finish this fight that the Moqtada militia started," Col Anthony Haslam, commanding officer of the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit in Najaf, said in a statement.
Col Haslam gave few details, but his threats and Sadr's defiance have raised the stakes in a battle that is the toughest test yet for Mr Allawi's six-week-old government. Most of Sadr's men and the young leader himself are holed up around Najaf's ancient cemetery or the adjoining Imam Ali Shrine. Storming such holy symbols could touch off a firestorm among the Shia community.
The unrest has disrupted Iraq's vital oil exports and triggered a spike in world prices. Crews have finished repairing Iraq's main southern oil export pipeline and are awaiting orders to start pumping after sabotage stopped operations for three days, an official said.
Oil prices held strong near record highs. US light crude was at 44.42 dollars a barrel, below Tuesday's 45.04 dollars. In fresh violence elsewhere, at least six Iraqis were killed and 10 wounded when a bomb exploded in a market just north of Baghdad.
Despite the tightening military noose, Moqtada Sadr has refused to surrender. The latest fighting has shattered a two-month truce between US forces and their most vocal critic in Iraq.
"Keep fighting even if you see me a prisoner or a martyr. God willing you will be victorious," Sadr said in a statement. A spokesman described the US threat as a propaganda ploy.
CRACKS OVER NAJAF: The crisis in Najaf also appears to have created cracks in Iyad Allawi's administration after deputy president Ibrahim Jaafari urged US troops to leave the city to end the fighting.
"I call for multinational forces to leave Najaf and for only Iraqi forces to remain there," Mr Jaafari said in remarks broadcast on Al Jazeera television. US forces say they have killed 360 Sadr loyalists so far in Najaf, home to 600,000 people. Sadr's spokesmen say far fewer have died during the second rebellion by the militia in four months.
Since Tuesday night, nearly 40 Iraqis have been killed and 230 wounded in five cities including Baghdad. The figure does not include Najaf. The latest fighting raises questions about what role Sadr wants to play.
Mr Allawi's attempts to bring Sadr into the political fold appear to have failed, for now. Aged about 30 and a prominent figure in a revered dynasty, he does not speak for all Iraq's Shias, but his tough anti-US rhetoric has won him many admirers.
KHAMENEI: In a related development, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Wednesday denounced the US military action in the Iraqi city of Najaf as one of the darkest crimes of humanity and said Muslims across the world would respond to it.
"The United States is slaughtering the people of one of the holiest Islamic cities and the Muslim world and the Iraqi nation will not stand by," Khamenei said in an address to cultural attaches broadcast on state television.
"These crimes are a dark blemish which will never be wiped from the face of America. They commit these crimes and shamelessly talk of democracy," he said. "Shame has no place in their vocabulary." The head of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, Hassan Rohani, also condemned the U.S. attacks.
IRNA NEWSMEN HELD: At least three reporters working for Iran's official IRNA news agency, reported kidnapped by state television, have been arrested by Baghdad police, one of the agency's senior editors said. -Reuters / AFP
