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Firefights erupt in fallujah najaf { April 26 2004 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A42580-2004Apr26.htmlhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A42580-2004Apr26.html
Firefights Erupt in Fallujah, Najaf
Two Soldiers Killed in Baghdad Building Explosion
By Karl Vick, Rajiv Chandrasekaran and Fred Barbash
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, April 26, 2004; 4:55 PM
BAGHDAD, April 26 -- Firefights erupted between U.S. troops and insurgents in both Fallujah and Najaf Monday, intense but isolated battles in a pair of cities that U.S. commanders have surrounded with thousands of troops while emphasizing a preference to reach a peaceful solution to the standoffs.
The intense fighting erupted just after dark in Najaf, the holiest city of Islam's Shiite branch, where a rebellious young cleric has taken refuge from the U.S. forces, according to special correspondent Saad Sarhan.
Witnesses said the fighting began about 8 p.m. and appeared to be isolated to a small coalition base, far from the sacred Shrine of Imam Ali at the center of the city.
There were also reports of additional clashes in the adjoining city of Kufa, near the mosque that serves as headquarters for Moqtada Sadr, the cleric whose Mahdi Army militia controls much of both cities. That militia also operates freely in Karbala, another city sacred to Iraq's Shiite majority.
The clashes come after senior U.S. officials repeatedly and solemnly read out warnings that stockpiling weapons in mosques was creating an "explosive" situation. The Kufa mosque is widely known to double as the Mahdi Army headquarters, with fighters openly displaying far more weapons than the handful of small arms that coalition rules allow guards of public buildings.
"The coalition certainly will not tolerate this situation," L. Paul Bremer, head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, said in a statement a spokesman read at a news briefing Monday evening to underscore a warning Bremer also issued in interviews with Arabic language media a day earlier.
"The restoration of these holy places to calm places of worship must begin immediately," Bremer said in his written statement.
The fighting around the coalition base began after Sadr's forces discovered that U.S. forces moved into the building earlier in the day, replacing a small force of Spanish troops who moved out as part of that country's unilateral withdrawal from Iraq. Militiamen described the arrival of the U.S. troops as discreet, with soldiers coming and going through a rear entrance of the building, built as an administrative annex to a hospital named for Sadr's late father, a revered ayatollah.
The initial firefight involved more than an hour of heavy rifle and machine-gun fire as well as mortars, witnesses said. Militia members fell back after U.S. attack helicopters arrived, but they appeared to be regrouping and adding reinforcements.
Outside the Kufa Grand Mosque, militiamen were scrambling into pickup trucks carrying Kalashnikovs and bouquets of rocket-propelled grenades and speeding toward an industrial area opposite the coalition base.
Earlier in the day, a U.S. Marine was killed and eight others were wounded in fighting in Fallujah, where a lengthy and fierce firefight between Marines and insurgents broke out in the northern part of the besieged city.
Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the U.S. military's deputy director of operations in Baghdad, said the firing came from a mosque about 10 a.m. (2 a.m. EDT). Marines entered the building, finding it empty except for "a significant amount of expended shell casings in the minaret."
Two hours later, more fire from the mosque was directed at the Marines, who got pinned down. In response, they requested and received air and tank support, which killed eight insurgents and damaged the mosque, Kimmitt said.
The exchange in Fallujah followed high-level weekend consultations -- involving the White House, the U.S. occupation authority and local leaders -- about the nearly month-long standoff in the Sunni city, 35 miles west of the capital. After the consultations, the Marines postponed plans to mount an attack against insurgents and decided to attempt to regain control without a full-scale offensive.
The plan was to have Marines conduct patrols in the city alongside Iraqi security forces.
The new strategy represents an effort by U.S. officials to avoid a military incursion that could entail urban combat, civilian casualties and a wave of retributive strikes outside Fallujah, further poisoning relations between Iraqis and U.S. occupation forces.
Two U.S. soldiers also were killed in Baghdad Monday when a building in an industrial section of the city exploded while being investigated by U.S. troops, collapsing half the structure onto four armored Humvees parked beside it.
Kimmitt said authorities suspected the building was being used to produce "chemical munitions."
That "could mean any number of things," he said, including smoke bombs or grenades. The operators of the site were "suspected of supplying chemical agents" to insurgents, he said at a briefing Monday afternoon. Kimmitt would not describe the nature of the munitions, although he downplayed suggestions that they might have been weapons of mass destruction.
Moments after the troops arrived at the building in the northern Waziriya district of the city, the blast went off, leveling the front half of the one-story building and setting ablaze four Humvees parked outside. The cause of the blast is being investigated, Kimmitt said.
A female U.S. soldier was seen being taken away by troops, her face and chest severely burned. Witnesses reported seeing up to 10 U.S. soldiers being loaded into ambulances. Kimmitt said five soldiers were wounded in the blast.
Several Iraqis were pulled from the rubble.
Teenagers later dragged away one of the burned-out Humvees, stripped it of equipment, and set it ablaze again. Some were seen afterward waving U.S. weapons.
The Reuters news agency claimed to have found identification documents suggesting the presence, at some point, of U.S. inspectors whose job it is to look for weapons of mass destruction. Kimmitt would not comment on that report.
Chandrasekaran reported from Fallujah. Barbash reported from Washington.
© 2004 The Washington Post Company
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