Attack on U.S. troops sparks firefight

Mediators urged the use of Iraqi police to keep the peace in Najaf and Kufa.
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Shiite insurgents fired mortar rounds and rocket-propelled grenades at a police station housing U.S. troops, touching off firefights early today in a Baghdad neighborhood that is a stronghold of radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
Helicopters and jet fighters flew over the station during the exchanges that the insurgents say came after U.S. troops tried to raid homes and arrest militiamen. A mortar round killed two militiamen and a civilian, said one al-Sadr official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
"This is the democracy George Bush brought us," shouted one young boy as he displayed a blanket that was burned and tattered in the exchanges. Crowds of irate teens gathered around, including one child that showed off his handgun to television news crews.
Mediation
Shiite negotiators have been trying to mediate an end to the fighting in Iraq's south, demanding Thursday that American troops remain in their positions and stop arrests in the Najaf and Kufa area to encourage a local cease-fire.
In return, al-Sadr's militia would continue withdrawing fighters from the two cities, a delegation statement said. The mediators, including politician Ahmad Chalabi, proposed that Shiite monitors ensure compliance with the truce and urged the U.S.-appointed Najaf provincial governor to put Iraqi police on the streets to maintain order.
There was no comment from U.S. officials to the call. Al-Sadr's spokesman Qais al-Khazali said the withdrawal of militiamen from the streets would be complete within "a day or two."
The uprising began in April after the U.S.-led coalition shut down al-Sadr's newspaper, arrested a top aide and announced an arrest warrant charging him with murder in the April 2003 death of a moderate cleric in Najaf.
The scene
Even as talks continued, Shiite militiamen fired rocket-propelled grenades at U.S. tanks and Humvees near a girls school in firefights that killed at least six and injured 11.
Explosions and gunfire reverberated through Kufa's twin city of Najaf after two U.S. tanks approached the city's vast cemetery early in the evening. One tank opened fire and al-Sadr's militiamen shot back, militiaman Riyadh Kadhem said.
Black-clad militiamen with rocket-propelled grenades launchers slung over their shoulders raced through the graveyard, dashing from tombstone to tombstone and taking cover from the gunfire.
At the city's hospital, men fanned a wounded shopkeeper lying in a hospital bed gasping for breath, his legs and abdomen covered with bloodied bandages.
"He was sitting in his shop when a rocket hit, killing his friends and wounding him all over," said an older man standing by the bedside.
American troops also swept into the neighborhood of flat-roofed houses near the Kufa mosque Thursday, looking for militiamen who had fired mortar shells at a U.S. base. Al-Sadr's loyalists opened fire as the Americans approached, taking covering behind crumbled walls and piles of rubbish.
Troops searching the school afterward found a cache of weapons, including mortars, rocket-propelled grenades and Kalashnikovs. CNN, which has a correspondent embedded with the 1st Armored Division in the area quoted U.S. officials as estimating that about 30 militiamen were killed, but it didn't say when.
Skirmishes have rattled this holy city 100 miles south of Baghdad since Shiite leaders announced the purported peace deal May 27. The Army says it has the right to mount armed patrols, but al-Sadr's militia, the al-Mahdi Army, considers them a provocation.
In the past eight days, at least 17 Iraqis have been killed and 74 injured, according to hospitals in Kufa. U.S. forces say two U.S. soldiers have been killed and eight injured during the same period.
A Shiite split?
The fighting in Najaf and Kufa has raised fears of splits among Iraq's Shiite Muslims who aspire to political power in Iraq after the U.S. occupation ends June 30. Senior Shiite clerics oppose al-Sadr but have refrained from moving against him for fear of worsening internal splits and losing influence at a time when the fiery preacher's anti-U.S. rhetoric is finding greater resonance among Iraqis.
Iraq's most influential Shiite cleric tacitly endorsed the new interim government, urging it to lobby the U.N. Security Council for full sovereignty in order to erase "all traces" of the American-run occupation.
Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani noted that the new government, appointed Tuesday by a U.N. envoy, lacks the "legitimacy of elections" and does not represent "in an acceptable manner all segments of Iraqi society and political forces."