U.S. Bombs Najaf/ al-Sadr Snubs Delegation

U.S. bombs Najaf militants;
al-Sadr snubs peace delegation

Crisis dominates Iraq’s National Conference
A U.S. tank patrols the empty streets of the besieged city of Najaf on Tuesday.
MSNBC News Services

Updated: 4:22 p.m. ET Aug. 17, 2004BAGHDAD, Iraq - A U.S. warplane bombed near Najaf’s vast cemetery as fighting with Shiite militants intensified Tuesday. An Iraqi delegation brought a peace proposal aimed at ending the standoff in the holy city, but the militants’ leader refused to meet with it.
A national conference in Baghdad that was meant to be a landmark step toward democracy was extended for another day, to Wednesday, as delegates sought to give the peace mission by the Iraqi political and religious leaders a chance. But Muqtada al-Sadr, the radical Shiite Muslim cleric leading the uprising in Najaf, turned them away “because of continued aggression by the Americans,� an aide said.
The peace proposal offered amnesty and a place in the political process for al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army militiamen if they put down their arms and left Najaf’s holy sites, including the Imam Ali Shrine, where fighters have taken refuge.

“The demands of the committee are impossible,� said an aide to al-Sadr, Sheik Ali Smeisim. “The shrine compound must be in the hands of the religious authorities. They are asking us to leave Najaf while we are the sons of Najaf.�
Violence in the capital also rattled the National Conference in Baghdad. A mortar round exploded on street several miles away in central Baghdad, killing seven people and wounding 35 others, according to the Health Ministry. Two other explosions, closer by, shook the conference center itself, slightly injuring at least two people.
Explosions and gunfire were heard in the streets of Najaf, 100 miles south of Baghdad, throughout the day, and U.S. troops entered the flashpoint Old City neighborhood, the stronghold of fighters loyal to al-Sadr.

At least one plane dropped bombs in the area of the cemetery, where al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia has been battling U.S. forces. It was not clear whether the strike hit inside or near the sprawling necropolis.

The clashes Tuesday killed three people and wound 15 others, all of them civilians, according to Sadiq al-Shaibany, a rescue worker. Two of the deaths occurred when gunfire hit the office of the Badr Brigades, the militia of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, which is not involved in the fighting, said Ridha Taqi, an official of the Supreme Council.

Soldier killed
Meanwhile, the military announced that a U.S. soldier was killed in an attack a day earlier in Baghdad, when insurgents fired rocket-propelled grenades at armored vehicles, disabling several of them, in an eastern part of the city.

At least 935 U.S. service members have been killed in Iraq since March 2003.

The fighting in Najaf has overshadowed the National Conference, which was supposed to be a revolutionary moment in Iraq’s democratic transformation, an unprecedented gathering of 1,300 Iraqis from all ethnic and religious groups for vigorous debate over their country’s course.

Tuesday’s mortar attack on the busy central Rasheed Street was the second such deadly attack since the conference began Sunday. The explosion set a building on fire and smashed the front of a barbershop. Blood mixed with shards of glass on the street as firefighters hosed charred cars.

Two blasts also shook the convention center where the conference is being held in Baghdad’s heavily barricaded Green Zone. A soldier and a civilian security guard were slightly injured, the military said.

Ali al-Yassiry, Another aide to al-Sadr who was at the conference to talk to U.N. officials about the Najaf violence, said he also was slightly injured in the blast.

The interim government of Prime Minister Ayad Allawi came into office in June facing a persistent 16-month-old insurgency led by Sunni Muslims in Baghdad and to the north and the west. The eruption of violence in the south with al-Sadr’s militiamen since Aug. 5 has only added to his problems.

Had al-Sadr agreed to stand down, the conference would have succeeded in turning a crisis into a startling, symbolic victory showing the potential power of communal solutions in post-Saddam Iraq.

But with his rejection, the conflict will have distracted attention from other pressing issues and damaged conference organizers’ efforts to project an optimistic image of national unity.

The Najaf violence “has really affected progress� at the National Conference, said one delegate, Ahmad al-Hayali.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan also has offered to play “a facilitating role� to help end the Najaf violence if all sides agree, U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard said Monday.

He said the decision came after Annan spoke to Secretary of State Colin Powell, Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi and the new U.N. envoy to Iraq, Ashraf Jehangir Qazi.

In other incidents:

Iraqi police freed a Jordanian hostage in a raid south of Baghdad, detaining three men, a police spokesman said. The Jordanian, Samer Tamaallah Hussein Tamaallah, was kidnapped two weeks ago.
A U.S. unmanned reconnaissance aircraft, an MQ-1 Predator, crashed north of Baghdad, the military said. The cause was being investigated.
Militants attacked an Italian patrol in the southern city of Nasiriyah, where al-Sadr gunmen have been active. Three Italian soldiers were wounded.
A British soldier was killed and another was wounded during fighting with al-Sadr loyalists in the southern city of Basra, the British army said.
Najaf’s police chief, Maj. Gen. Ghalib al-Jazaari, said Monday that al-Sadr fighters broke into his family’s house in Basra, beat up his sisters and kidnapped his handicapped, 80-year-old father.
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to .com - News