U.S. and al-Sadr forces swap fire

By Tom Lasseter
Knight Ridder Newspapers

Muqtada al-Sadr is an anti-American cleric.

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Al-Sadr spokesman Ahmed al-Shabani said the fighting began in the early evening and lasted for four to five hours. Al-Shabani said members of al-Sadr's al-Mahdi Army militia thought the U.S. troops had come to arrest al-Sadr and opened fire.

A press release from the Marines said a routine patrol in Najaf got into a firefight after being attacked by AK-47 fire, rocket-propelled grenades and mortars. It was not clear whether the patrol unwittingly passed by a house that al-Sadr was visiting.

Capt. Carrie Batson, a spokeswoman for the 11th Marine Expeditionary Force, said in an e-mail that the Marines "simply responded to the fire they were receiving — in self-defense."

"The Marines DID NOT search al-Sadr's home, nor did they surround his house."

Al-Shabani put the Iraqi casualties at one dead and six wounded. The Marines said they had killed two Iraqi insurgents.

The 11th Marines took over responsibility for Najaf only two days ago. Al-Sadr lives in nearby Kufa but reportedly was at the Najaf home of his late father when the battle broke out.

Whatever the cause of the confrontation, it highlights the delicacy of U.S. patrols in areas such as Najaf and Sadr City, the slum in Baghdad where al-Sadr's men have effectively taken control.

Controlling al-Sadr, and navigating the space between his forces and the Americans, may well be one of the interim Iraqi government's toughest tasks.

An Iraqi court issued an arrest warrant for al-Sadr in connection with the murder of a rival cleric last year, but the current Iraqi administration has shown little interest in pursuing him.

The release from the Marines noted that "Marines were patrolling in areas of the city authorized under the cease-fire agreement" reached between al-Sadr and local officials in June.
 
"The Americans are the ones who have broken the truce," said al-Shabani, al-Sadr's spokesman in Najaf. Al-Shabani said, however, that al-Sadr had not ordered his militia to attack American troops.

News of the Najaf situation was read over loudspeakers in the Baghdad Shiite neighborhood of Kadhamiya, where a pro-al-Sadr protest broke out, witnesses said. Later, the streets of Sadr City were filled with cars and trucks carrying militia members who brandished AK-47s, rocket-propelled grenades and even swords.

The men said they were awaiting orders to drive south to Najaf, but about 11:30 p.m., the word began to spread that the fighters should go home, because it was not clear that al-Sadr was still surrounded.

Al-Sadr's militia rebelled against the U.S. presence in Iraq in April after the U.S. civilian administrator, L. Paul Bremer, ordered an al-Sadr newspaper closed and a key aide arrested. Hundreds of Iraqis were killed in the ensuing fighting.

At the time, U.S. officials said they would arrest or kill al-Sadr, a threat that seems to have faded in the weeks since the Coalition Provisional Authority surrendered authority to an interim Iraqi government.

Al-Sadr complained to worshippers at Friday prayers that several of his movement's leaders remain in jail, and he called for their release "or we are free to act."

On Saturday, U.S. troops arrested the head of al-Sadr's office in nearby Karbala, a move that prompted Raad al-Kadhami, an al-Sadr spokesman in Baghdad, to say that American troops were behaving "in a barbaric way."

Asked what the repercussions might be, al-Kadhami said, "We're all awaiting al-Sadr's directions."