Sadr Rejects Ultimatum

BAGHDAD, 20 August 2004 — Followers of Moqtada Sadr fought US troops in Najaf yesterday after the Shiite cleric rejected an Iraqi government ultimatum for his Mehdi Army militia to lay down arms and vacate Imam Ali Mosque.

US aircraft and tanks pounded the area around the mosque where Sadr and his followers have holed up. Thick smoke poured into the sky, dozens of explosions shook the old city and automatic rifle crackled through the air.

“This is the final call for them to disarm, vacate the holy shrine, engage in political work and consider the interests of the homeland,” interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi told a news conference here.

A threatened raid on the mosque could inflame the country’s majority Shiite population against the government. Neighboring Iran has appealed to the government to search for a peaceful solution to the crisis.

Abdel-Hadi Al-Darraji, a Sadr representative in Baghdad, warned that fighting in Najaf could “ignite a revolution all over Iraq.”

“We welcome any initiative to stop the bloodbath in Najaf,” he told Al-Arabiya television. “Otherwise the battle will move to Baghdad, Amarrah, Basra and everywhere in Iraq.”

Militants earlier bombarded a Najaf police station with mortars rounds, killing eight policemen and injuring 31 others, hospital officials said.

An aide to Sadr told Al-Jazeera television that residents of southern Iraq have set oil pipelines on fire and threatened to torch oil wells across Iraq.

“After the declarations of the so-called Iraqi minister of state, in the name of his unjust government... residents of southern Iraq, mainly in Basra and Amarrah, have bombed several pipelines and are threatening to torch all the oil wells in the south,” said Aws Al-Khafagi, head of the Sadr’s office in Nasiriyah.

There was no official confirmation of Khafagi’s statements, but worries over oil supplies sent crude futures at the New York Mercantile Exchange to a new high of $48.20 per barrel.

In Baghdad, US troops overran the cleric’s stronghold in Sadr City with tanks and armored vehicles, meeting little resistance. They later withdrew to the outskirts of the area, home to about two million people and where fierce fighting has broken out in the past two weeks.

US forces said they had killed 50 militiamen on Wednesday in their push into Sadr City. More than 50 militiamen were killed in yesterday’s fighting, according to Na’eem Al-Kaabi, a spokesman for the Mehdi Army.

Iraq’s National Conference, meanwhile, revealed the names of 81 members selected for the country’s new Interim National Council, or Parliament. The president of the organizing committee, Farad Massoum, said the selection had been fair and open, and all ethnic, religious, and secular groups were represented in the INC.

However, many delegates at the 1,000-strong National Conference complained the procedure had been undemocratic as they had been asked to vote on a list whose candidates were only revealed later.

— Additional input from agencies