AP Photo/Nabil Juranee
Soldiers loyal to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr take up positions during clashes with British forces in the southern city of Basra on Monday.
Posted on 08/16/2004 9:04:20 AM PDT by NormsRevenge
NAJAF, Iraq (AP) - U.S. tanks rolled into the Old City of Najaf toward a holy Shiite shrine where militants were hiding Monday as participants at a national conference voted to send a delegation here to try to negotiate an end to the fighting.
The city, which had been quiet early Monday, was hit by series of explosions in the late morning that shook the vast cemetery, the scene of many battles between U.S. forces and militants. Witnesses also reported U.S. tanks had moved to within 500 yards of the revered Imam Ali Shrine.
"We are proceeding with our operations. We are moving forward and we captured some positions inside the Old City from the south during the night and this morning," Police Chief Brig. Ghalib al-Jazaari said.
Fighting resumed Sunday after negotiations and a cease-fire collapsed. Two U.S. soldiers were killed in Najaf fighting Sunday, and a Marine was killed in Iraq's western, largely Sunni province of Anbar. At least 934 U.S. servicemembers have been killed in Iraq since March 2003.
Also Monday, officials reported that a French-American journalist and his Iraqi translator have disappeared in the southern city of Nasiriyah.
The journalist, Micah Garen, and his translator Amir Doushi went missing while walking through a busy market in the city, said Adnan al-Shoraify, deputy governor of Dhi Qar province. He said the translator's family had first reported the two missing.
The Arab television station Al-Jazeera said the journalist had been kidnapped and provided no other details. Al-Shoraify could not confirm whether Garen, 33, was abducted.
The fighting in Najaf has cast a pall over the National Conference in Baghdad, an unprecedented gathering of 1,300 religious, tribal and political leaders from across Iraq meant to be a key first step toward democracy.
Some of the delegates threatened to walk out unless the crisis was resolved. On Monday, the conference voted to send a delegation to Najaf to ask radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr to tell his followers to drop their weapons and join the country's political process.
"The door is very open to all Iraqis, regardless of their religion, ethnic background, to join the free political process," Shiite cleric Hussein al-Sadr, a distant relative of Muqtada al-Sadr, told the conference.
Muqtada al-Sadr's aides said they supported efforts to end the violence.
"We are ready to accept any mediation for a peaceful solution," al-Sadr aide Ahmed al-Shaibany said.
At the same time, however, al-Shaibany called on tribal chiefs throughout Iraq to travel to Najaf to form human shields to protect al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militant and the Imam Ali Shrine.
Fighting on Sunday apparently caused minor damage to the outer wall of the shrine compound, ripping off some tiles and leaving some holes.
With Sunday's deaths, at least eight U.S. troops have been killed in Najaf, along with about 20 Iraqi officers, since fighting there began Aug. 5. The U.S. military estimates hundreds of insurgents have been killed, but the militants dispute the figure.
In other violence, two civilians were killed and four others injured in the city of Baqouba on Monday when a mortar hit their house, said Ali Hussein, a medic at the main hospital in Baqouba.
It was not known who fired the mortar, but insurgents frequently clash with U.S. troops and Iraqi security forces in the city, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad.
A roadside bomb in Baqouba also wounded three members of the Iraqi National Guard, said Zuhair Abdul-Kareem, one of the injured guardsmen.
In the volatile Sunni city of Fallujah, west of Baghdad, U.S. warplanes bombed three neighborhoods Sunday afternoon, killing five civilians and wounding six others, said, Dr. Adil Khamis, of Fallujah General Hospital.
The three-day conference, which started Sunday, aims to give a broad spectrum of Iraqis a voice in the political process and increase the legitimacy of interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's interim government, which is deeply dependent on American troops and money even after the end of the U.S. occupation.
Just hours after the heavily guarded meeting began, however, insurgents fired a mortar barrage that landed at a nearby commuter bus station, killing two people and wounding 17 others, according to the Health Ministry.
The mortars apparently were aimed at the fortified Green Zone enclave where the conference was taking place, police said.
The continued Najaf fighting has undermined Allawi's attempts to show he is in control. The country's Shiite majority has been angered by the sight of U.S. troops firing around some of their holiest sites - and many have blamed the Iraqi government.
Some conference delegates have staged loud protests and others have threatened to pull out if the violence does not end.
In an attempt to assuage the complaints, a working committee was formed to find a peaceful solution to the tension in Najaf.
Cabinet minister Waeil Abdel-Latif warned of a new major offensive in Najaf unless the militants drop their weapons, get out of the city and transform themselves into a political party.
"We shall give the peaceful way a chance ... and after that, we shall take another position," he said Sunday.
He also said foreign fighters were among the militants captured in Najaf - a repeated government claim - and he played a video that showed interviews with Iranian, Egyptian and Jordanian fighters and boxes of weapons, reportedly from Iran.
Al-Sadr, a fiery young cleric, has drawn support among some with his denunciations of the continued U.S. domination of the country. He has depicted the fight by his followers as a campaign against occupation.
Then shut up and get out of the way and it will be resolved in about three days.
Delegates Urge Al-Sadr to Leave Shrine
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&e=4&u=/ap/20040816/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_national_conference
By SAMEER N. YACOUB, Associated Press Writer
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Delegates at Iraq (news - web sites)'s National Conference called Monday for radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr to abandon his uprising against U.S. and Iraqi troops and pull his fighters out of a holy shrine in Najaf.
Al-Sadr and his followers have fought U.S. and Iraqi forces from within the Imam Ali shrine, one of Shia Islam's most sacred sites, and fighting has spread to other parts of the country.
"This is not right. We demand Muqtada al-Sadr withdraw from the holy shrine because it's not the specific property of one person," Hussein al-Sadr, a distant cousin to the cleric, told the conference. "It belongs to everybody. Shrines should not be controlled by one man, regardless of his status."
The majority of delegates raised their hands in favor of Hussein al-Sadr's proposal to send a delegation to Najaf to meet with the militant cleric and ask him to stop fighting and join the political process.
"The door is very open to all Iraqis, regardless of their religion, ethnic background, to join the free political process," Hussein al-Sadr said.
Ahmed al-Shaibany, an aide to Muqtada al-Sadr, welcomed the conference's initiative, saying that "we are ready to accept any mediation for a peaceful solution."
Delegates also said some of al-Sadr's people attended the conference Monday for the first time since it began Sunday.
The three-day conference, with 1,300 religious, political and civic leaders in attendance, will help elect a 100-member national council that is expected to act as a watchdog over the interim government ahead of elections scheduled for January.
But the fighting in Najaf has threatened to overshadow the conference and many delegates have voiced opposition to working on democratic progress while the country is wracked by violence and military operations by coalition troops.
On Monday, Falah Hassan, from the Shiite Political Council, walked out of the conference, following an ultimatum his group issued on Sunday that his delegates would leave if U.S. troops didn't pull out of Najaf within 24 hours. The rest of his group remained at the conference, however.
Some delegates expressed optimism that this first fragile taste of democracy would succeed.
"Discussions were good yesterday and we hope we can carry on and reach an agreement," said Hameed al-Kafaei, former spokesman for the now dissolved Iraqi Governing Council. "There were heated debates, emotional debates, but everyone was there, we kept on going."
The conference is an unprecedented forum for Iraqis of all ethnic and religious groups to discuss their visions for the future of their country, which is struggling with a Sunni insurgency, a renewed uprising by Shiite militants and constant sabotage attacks on its reconstruction efforts.
The gathering is being held under intense security in the fortified Green Zone enclave in Baghdad. A 15-foot-high concrete barriers blocks the entrance. Bridges leading to the area were barricaded Sunday and the government imposed a daytime curfew for the area.
Despite the precautions, explosions shook the conference hall Sunday when a mortar barrage hit a nearby commuter bus station nearby, killing two people and wounding 17. Several explosions also were heard in Baghdad on Monday, but their origin was not known.
In January, Iraq is to hold elections to choose a transitional government. The newly elected government then will convene a national convention to draft a constitution to be put to the voters in October 2005. Iraqis will then hold another vote in December 2005 for a constitutionally based government.
I hoping little paperweight-sized pieces of this mosque show up on EBay next week.
A distant relative to the Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, Hussein al-Sadr, speaks to the media after he proposed sending a delegation to meet Muqtada al-Sadr in Najaf to ask him to stop fighting and join the political process instead during Iraq (news - web sites)'s National Conference in Baghdad, Iraq Monday Aug. 16, 2004. National Conference delegates called Monday for radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr to abandon his uprising against U.S. and Iraqi troops and pull his fighters out of a holy shrine in Najaf. (AP Photo/Hadi Mizban)
Per the Geneva Convention, those fellas don't look like "soldiers". Unless a ski mask is now a "uniform".
Iraqi youths chant anti-U.S. slogans near a burning U.S. Army tank after it came under attack by militants in the eastern Baghdad's Shi'ite suburb of al-Sadr city August 16, 2004. Fresh fighting between U.S. forces and Sadr's Mehdi militia broke out in a Shi'ite slum in Baghdad, witnesses said. They said U.S. troops were sealing off the area, called Sadr City. REUTERS/Thaier Al-Sudani
" SO YOU JACKASSES WANNA PLAY ? "
Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi urged an Iraqi court on August 16, 2004 to speed up proceedings against toppled leader Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) and his close aides. Allawi said his U.S.-backed government would do all it can to ensure the men get a fair trial. Saddam is seen an Iraqi tribunal July 1. Photo by Pool/Reuters
These people are stupid. I'm starting to get mad at them bigtime.
A crowd of unarmed volunteer human shields, made up of Shi'ite Muslim followers of radical Iraqi cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, chant anti-government slogans in the courtyard of Imam Ali's shrine in Najaf August 16, 2004. With his militants and human shields holed up inside one of Shi'ite Islam's holiest shrine, radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr is playing a shrewd waiting game ahead of an expected American-led offensive. REUTERS/Ali Jasim
That bird in the air is not a dove.. A war hawk?
Wait until the Predator dornes drop a couple on these sorry pieces of ..
A girl in a wheelchair is held aloft by a crowd of unarmed volunteer human shields, made up of Shi'ite Muslim followers of radical Iraqi cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, in the courtyard of Imam Ali's shrine in Najaf August 16, 2004. With his militants and human shields holed up inside one of Shi'ite Islam's holiest shrine, radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr is playing a shrewd waiting game ahead of an expected American-led offensive. REUTERS/Chris Helgren
Having the journalist Micah Garan out of the picture spells trouble for us. He supplied the Marines with some of the very best targeting information. He'd walk around interviewing people on the street while making notes of where the Iranian fighters were hiding. He'd report back and the Marine tanks would send the Iranians to hell. Micah did some good work. He will be missed.
I'd always thought our tanks were pretty indestructible...wonder what these goons are hitting 'em with?
W, needs all the help he can get.
Sure. As soon as we take Sadr into custody. These a$$wipes are destroying millions of dollars in US equipment and killing our people. The provisional Iraqi government can't expect us to continually take such losses as the cost of doing business. We need to act decisively to end this crap- for the good of our forces and for the good of Iraq.
This really pi$$es me off.
Hey, that guy looks like Michael Moore, after a bath and a trim...
It is a pigeon and full of Shi'ite.
Several Abrams tanks have been killed anyway.
Najaf article --> http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=BG4LYS0C3RI00CRBAEKSFFA?type=worldNews&storyID=5985456
A bomb went off under the tank. The crew escaped with minor injuries. The idiots set it on fire and we've been killing them on that street ever since.
This may be wasted effort on our part as the Iraq Council wants to placate Sadr. Appeasement for this Mafioso and appeasement for Zarqawi, another Mafioso, in Fallujah seems to be the direction that the Iraq Council wishes to pursue.
They can appease Mafia/Fascist/Nazi/Islamics without us being put on the front lines. Bush said we would 'stay the course' until we are asked to leave. We may never be asked to leave as long as the Iraq Council can put our Marines in harm's way in order to appease their Mafia-dictators.
The new Saddam is just around the corner, and we should pull our people and resources out and north to Kurd and south to Kuwait, sit back and watch the Mafia rivals do a "NYCity" on Iraq.
It may make for a new weekly TV show--"The IslamoMafiosa fight it out.....Inshallah!"
PING - IRAQ - plenty of anti-US pics to warp western minds with. gotta love the girl in the wheelchair, that's so "hollywood" ... let me guess, she's a *cancer victim too*! ANd has a dog!
... and their idiot parents decided "Hey, let's take her somewhere where they have an army of cirminals facing 5,000 marines. She could do some real good there."
Jeez. they are taking the whole PLO playbook and running right through it... what a pile of cr** ...
Watching the videos and looking at the pictures, you notice that most of his followers are brainwashed kids under the age 25.
Iranian weapons bought from our friends in England, France, Germany, China, and Russia.
I'd hope the decision to scuttle a multi-million dollar tank isn't made too hastily, if that's indeed what's going on.
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