43 insurgents killed as Spanish troops pull out of holy Iraqi city

NAJAF – Forty-three insurgents were killed in fierce overnight fighting with US-led coalition forces near Najaf as Spanish troops were completing their withdrawal from the Iraqi holy city, the US-led coalition said yesterday.

Fighting broke out late on Monday near Najaf between US troops and Iraqi militiamen loyal to wanted firebrand Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr who is holed up inside the city. Spanish troops based there have completed their withdrawal to Diwaniyah, headquarters for the 1 432-strong Spanish contingent, which is due to leave Iraq in the coming days, the military spokesman said in Madrid.With US troops facing resistance from both the Shiite and Sunni Muslim communities in Iraq, the coalition was preparing to relieve tensions in the Sunni city of Fallujah with a series of joint patrols instead of a renewed assault on the besieged city.Patrols had been slated to start yesterday in the city, 50 kilometres west of Baghdad, after fighting the day before left one US marine and eight insurgents dead.Marines on the ground suggested it would be at least Thursday before the patrols could begin.US-led coalition forces have been camped outside Najaf for weeks, bottling up Sadr who has repeatedly threatened that US forces face suicide bombings if they attack Iraq’s holy cities.The United States has said they will capture or kill Sadr, who is wanted for the alleged murder of a rival cleric last year.Sadr has warned that US forces would feel the “fires of hell” if they tried.The renewed fighting followed the deaths of two members of a unit assigned to hunt for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction at a chemical factory in Baghdad on Monday, a senior US defense official said.Heavy gunfire and the sound of mortar explosions were heard Monday night around Kufa about 10 kilometres from Najaf, an AFP correspondent reported.”Forty-three anti-coalition forces were killed and an anti-coalition anti-aircraft system was destroyed” by an AC-130 gunship, the spokeswoman said of the clashes at about 21h45 (1745 GMT) on Monday.A Najaf hospital official put the preliminary casualty toll at 28 Iraqis dead and 32 others wounded, but with many bodies yet to be retrieved from the battlefield.A member of Sadr’s Mehdi Army told the correspondent the militia had clashed with a US Army unit at the northern entrance of Kufa, about 160 kilometres south of Baghdad, and on the outskirts of Najaf.”The clashes… are a provocation, but the red line has still not yet been crossed,” Qais al-Khazaali, a Mehdi Army spokesman told Al-Jazeera television.”To enter Najaf means to pour scorn on the Muslim holy places whether they are Sunni or Shiite.But we are ready, we are organised and we are coordinated.”The coalition claimed has claimed that support for Sadr was dwindling, but spokesman Dan Senor described the situation in Najaf as “explosive” and warned militants not to stockpile weapons in mosques, shrines and schools.Coalition military leaders have also claimed that a hard core of some 200 foreign fighters were stoking fighting in Fallujah.However, the claims were rejected in a withering attack on the coalition’s approach in Iraq by 52 former British diplomats in a letter to Prime Minister Tony Blair.”Heavy weapons unsuited to the task in hand, inflammatory language, the current confrontations in Najaf and Fallujah, all these have built up rather than isolated the opposition,” said the letter.Estimates of Iraqi dead since the start of the US-led invasion have ranged from between 9 000 to 15 000, with about 720 US troops also killed.April has proved to be the bloodiest month, with more than 100 troops killed during fighting in hotbeds of Sunni resistance and a series of clashes within the Shiite community.Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer renewed his attack on Spain over its withdrawal saying it was “dangerous and ill-conceived” in an article for Tuesday’s Asian Wall Street Journal.Meanwhile, Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the alleged mastermind of al Qaeda operations in Iraq, has claimed the suicide bombings on Iraqi southern oil terminals on Saturday which briefly halted oil exports, according to an Islamist website.It was impossible to immediately verify the claim.- Nampa-AFPSpanish troops based there have completed their withdrawal to Diwaniyah, headquarters for the 1 432-strong Spanish contingent, which is due to leave Iraq in the coming days, the military spokesman said in Madrid.With US troops facing resistance from both the Shiite and Sunni Muslim communities in Iraq, the coalition was preparing to relieve tensions in the Sunni city of Fallujah with a series of joint patrols instead of a renewed assault on the besieged city.Patrols had been slated to start yesterday in the city, 50 kilometres west of Baghdad, after fighting the day before left one US marine and eight insurgents dead.Marines on the ground suggested it would be at least Thursday before the patrols could begin.US-led coalition forces have been camped outside Najaf for weeks, bottling up Sadr who has repeatedly threatened that US forces face suicide bombings if they attack Iraq’s holy cities.The United States has said they will capture or kill Sadr, who is wanted for the alleged murder of a rival cleric last year.Sadr has warned that US forces would feel the “fires of hell” if they tried.The renewed fighting followed the deaths of two members of a unit assigned to hunt for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction at a chemical factory in Baghdad on Monday, a senior US defense official said.Heavy gunfire and the sound of mortar explosions were heard Monday night around Kufa about 10 kilometres from Najaf, an AFP correspondent reported.”Forty-three anti-coalition forces were killed and an anti-coalition anti-aircraft system was destroyed” by an AC-130 gunship, the spokeswoman said of the clashes at about 21h45 (1745 GMT) on Monday.A Najaf hospital official put the preliminary casualty toll at 28 Iraqis dead and 32 others wounded, but with many bodies yet to be retrieved from the battlefield.A member of Sadr’s Mehdi Army told the correspondent the militia had clashed with a US Army unit at the northern entrance of Kufa, about 160 kilometres south of Baghdad, and on the outskirts of Najaf.”The clashes… are a provocation, but the red line has still not yet been crossed,” Qais al-Khazaali, a Mehdi Army spokesman told Al-Jazeera television.”To enter Najaf means to pour scorn on the Muslim holy places whether they are Sunni or Shiite.But we are ready, we are organised and we are coordinated.”The coalition claimed has claimed that support for Sadr was dwindling, but spokesman Dan Senor described the situation in Najaf as “explosive” and warned militants not to stockpile weapons in mosques, shrines and schools.Coalition military leaders have also claimed that a hard core of some 200 foreign fighters were stoking fighting in Fallujah.However, the claims were rejected in a withering attack on the coalition’s approach in Iraq by 52 former British diplomats in a letter to Prime Minister Tony Blair.”Heavy weapons unsuited to the task in hand, inflammatory language, the current confrontations in Najaf and Fallujah, all these have built up rather than isolated the opposition,” said the letter.Estimates of Iraqi dead since the start of the US-led invasion have ranged from between 9 000 to 15 000, with about 720 US troops also killed.April has proved to be the bloodiest month, with more than 100 troops killed during fighting in hotbeds of Sunni resistance and a series of clashes within the Shiite community.Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer renewed his attack on Spain over its withdrawal saying it was “dangerous and ill-conceived” in an article for Tuesday’s Asian Wall Street Journal.Meanwhile, Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the alleged mastermind of al Qaeda operations in Iraq, has claimed the suicide bombings on Iraqi southern oil terminals on Saturday which briefly halted oil exports, according to an Islamist website.It was impossible to immediately verify the claim.- Nampa-AFP