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Americans broke cease firewith sadr { August 6 2004 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.thedesertsun.com/news/stories2004/national/20040806014815.shtmlhttp://www.thedesertsun.com/news/stories2004/national/20040806014815.shtml
Clashes shatter cease-fire
Cleric-led uprising in Iraq raises fears of wide-spread violence
The Associated Press
August 6th, 2004
NAJAF, Iraq -- Militant Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s militia battled U.S. and Iraqi troops Thursday in the holy city of Najaf, sparking clashes in other Shiite areas that killed at least 20 Iraqis and a U.S. soldier. An al-Sadr spokesman threatened a "revolution" unless American forces agree to a new cease-fire.
During the daylong fighting in Najaf, a U.S. helicopter was shot down and its wounded crew evacuated. A revered Shiite shrine was also slightly damaged, witnesses said.
U.S. warplanes bombed a cemetery on the outskirts of the city where militants were hiding, the military said.
The fighting raised fears of a return of the large-scale uprising launched in April by al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia, which at that time battled U.S. and coalition troops in several cities in the first major Shiite violence against the Americans.
The confrontation dragged on for two months, until Iraqi politicians and religious leaders worked out a series of truces.
After nightfall Thursday, al-Sadr’s side said it wanted to restore the truces that have kept a relative calm for months.
Al-Sadr "announced that we are committed to the truce and that (U.S.) forces must honor the truce," Ahmed al-Shaibany, a spokesman for the cleric in Najaf, told The Associated Press. If U.S. forces do not agree, "then the firing and igniting of the revolution will continue."
The reigniting of widescale violence now would cause serious difficulties for coalition forces and the Iraqi interim government, already struggling against an unrelenting insurgency by Sunni militants.
Each side blamed the other Thursday for the breakdown.
"Those militias have targeted the police, so definitely our police force had to respond," Interior Minister Falah Hassan al-Naqib said, referring to an attack on a Najaf police station early Thursday.
Ali al-Yassiry, an al-Sadr spokesman in Baghdad, accused the U.S. military of breaching the truce by fighting near al-Sadr’s house in Najaf, 100 miles south of Baghdad, on Monday.
"The Americans violated the cease-fire, and we can do nothing but defend ourselves by all means possible," he said.
In other violence Thursday, a pair of insurgents dressed as police opened fire outside a police station while a third barreled forward in a vehicle filled with explosives and blew up, the Interior Ministry said.
The attack in Mahawil, 50 miles south of Baghdad, killed six people and wounded 24 others, the Health Ministry said. The two gunmen escaped, said Sabah Kadhim, an Interior Ministry spokesman.
In central Baghdad, insurgents fired three rockets late Thursday, one of them hitting a hotel compound where foreign journalists and foreign contractors stay. The rocket hit outside a restaurant at the Palestine Hotel, leaving a small crater and shattering windows but causing no serious damage and no injuries.
Residents of Najaf called the battles in the city the fiercest they have seen. It began when Mahdi Army militants attacked a police station about 1 a.m. with mortars, rocket-propelled grenades and gunfire, officials said.
U.S. troops joined in, and the fighting continued well into Thursday night.
During the fighting, insurgents attacked a nearby U.S. military convoy, killing one U.S. soldier and wounding five others, the U.S. military said. A UH-1 helicopter was hit by ground fire and forced to make an emergency landing, the military said. The injured crew was evacuated to safety.
The fighting also slightly damaged the dome of the Imam Ali Shrine in the old city at Najaf’s center, witnesses said. The shrine -- reputed to hold the remains of Imam Ali, the most hallowed saint in Shia Islam -- was slightly damaged twice during fighting in May, though U.S. force have tried to avoid damaging shrines for fear of enraging Iraq’s Shiite majority.
Al-Sadr supporters took to mosque loudspeakers to call reinforcements into the streets, with al-Sadr ordering his militia to fight against any force entering Najaf’s old city, said al-Shaibany.
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