BAGHDAD: US troops launched a major offensive in Iraq's two holiest Shia cities last night in a new effort to unseat the rebel cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. For the first time since the invasion last year, US tanks were sent into Kerbala and Najaf, close to the holy shrines that dominate both cities.
Troops ran into heavy fighting in the Sadr stronghold of Kufa, just east of Najaf, where they killed 41 gunmen after facing a barrage of mortars and rocket-propelled grenades. Lt Col Pat White, a US officer at the scene, described it as a "hornets' nest". In Najaf itself, troops from the 2nd Armoured Cavalry seized control of the governor's office.
In Kerbala, 50 miles to the north, tanks and armoured vehicles destroyed a Sadr office with heavy machinegun fire and then took up positions just 500 yards from the gold-domed Imam Hussein shrine. At least one Iraqi was killed and nine others injured in the operation.
In parallel with the military assaults, the US yesterday began to build new political pressure on the rebel cleric, whose militia led uprisings across southern Iraq a month ago. Paul Bremer, the US administrator of Iraq, named a new governor for Najaf yesterday and his officials promised to bring in a new police chief, establish a new civil defence force, a new local council and spend "hundreds of millions of dollars" on projects to revive the local economy.
The previous governor had left Najaf for Iran when Mr Sadr's uprisings began and did not return. The local council simply dissolved itself.
Earlier this week Iraq's mainstream Shia parties, apparently encouraged by US officials, made their first concerted effort to put pressure on Mr Sadr to lay down his arms and negotiate a solution to the month-long standoff.
Although he is regarded as an extremist, his violent uprisings briefly captured a wave of frustration and resentment with the military occupation.
Yet the latest operations put the US military in an extraordinarily sensitive position because although most moderate Shia have little time for Mr Sadr, most will be appalled at the sight of American tanks in the heart of Iraq's two holiest cities.
Mr Bremer said Mr Sadr should face an Iraqi court on charges linking him to the murder of a more moderate Shia figure in Najaf last year.
"Syed Moqtada must face Iraqi justice for the crimes of which has been accused," Mr Bremer said. "There is no room in the new Iraq for the kind of lawless self-interested behaviour we have seen in the past few weeks."
The man named as Najaf's new governor, Adnan al-Zurufi, is a Shia lawyer who was imprisoned under Saddam Hussein for opposing the regime.
One of Mr Bremer's senior aides admitted yesterday that the US had stepped back from an earlier threat to "kill or capture" the cleric. The official said the US now wanted Mr Sadr to "make himself available to Iraqi justice". - (Guardian Service)
A former US military police commander at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison has returned to the United States and is being released from active duty after charges he secretly photographed naked female US soldiers, an official said yesterday.
Capt Leo Merck (32), a California National Guardsman, flew into Fort Lewis in Washington state, said guard spokeswoman Maj Denise Varner. She did not know whether he had already served time in prison following the incident, but said he was in the process of being released from active duty. -