U.S. forces have pounded Shi'ite militia from the air and ground in the holy Iraqi city of Najaf and used loudspeakers to urge the defiant fighters to surrender and civilians to get away from the battle zone. U.S. warplanes attacked militia positions at sunset near the city's ancient Shi'ite Muslim cemetery, as fighting raged for a sixth consecutive day between marines and gunmen loyal to radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, witnesses said on Tuesday. Plumes of smoke rose from the cemetery, where Sadr's Mehdi Army have dug in and stored caches of weapons. Marines have thrown a tight cordon around the cemetery and the Imam Ali Shrine but have yet to make a full assault on fighters holed up in the sites, a move that would enrage Iraq's majority Shi'ites.
The fighting is the toughest test yet for the six-week-old administration of interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, who is also struggling with a spate of kidnappings aimed at pressuring foreign forces and firms to leave Iraq. An Islamist Web site carried a videotape on Tuesday purporting to show the beheading in Iraq of a man identified as an "Egyptian spy" working with U.S. forces.
But in a relief for the cash-strapped government, Iraq resumed full oil production in its southern oilfields after quickly repairing a pipeline valve blown up on Monday by saboteurs, an Iraqi oil official said. The official said both export lines from the fields in the Basra region now were exporting. The closure of one of the pipelines on Monday sent world oil prices to fresh record highs. |