IRAQ Street fights erupt in southern cities

A Basra cleric has offered rewards for capturing and killing U.S. soldiers.
COMBINED DISPATCHES
BAGHDAD -- Urban street fighting took over the southern Iraqi city of Basra on Saturday after black-clad militia members loyal to an anti-American cleric stormed through the streets skirmishing with British troops.
There were also deadly clashes in the southern city of Amarah and in Karbala south of Baghdad, where U.S. tanks entered the city from two directions, blocking roads leading to the city center.
The turbulence in the south was a barometer of the depth of the discontent with the U.S.-led occupation, especially among young and impoverished Iraqis who feel that in firebrand cleric Muqtada al-Sadr they have found someone who will stand up for them against the Americans.
Five troops in the U.S.-led coalition were injured in Saturday's clashes in Basra, and between 30 and 40 al-Sadr militia men wounded or killed, according to a senior coalition official.
Incentive for killing
On Friday, a Basra cleric connected to al-Sadr offered rewards of up to $300 for the capture or killing of soldiers in the U.S.-led coalition.
The cleric, Sheik Abdul-Sattar al-Bahadli, angered over the abuse of Iraqis at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison, also told worshippers at Friday prayers that it was acceptable to kidnap a female soldier and use her as a sex slave.
The violence in southern Iraq came as U.N. special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi continued discussions with the U.S.-backed Iraqi Governing Council, tribal sheiks and other groups over how to form an interim government to rule the country between June 30, when the United States is scheduled to turn over power, and the first elected government, which is expected to be in place in early 2005.
Brahimi strove to assure council members that the proposals he had made last month to the U.N. Security Council did not represent his own ideas but "was our reading of what we heard from a very, very large number of Iraqis," he told reporters after a meeting with the governing council.
Response to violence
Coalition forces responded to the violence with moves against officials in al-Sadr's movement, arresting his main representative in the southern city of Nasiriyah, Sheik Moayad al-Asadi.
U.S. troops backed by armored vehicles and helicopters also stormed al-Sadr's office in Baghdad's Shiite district of Sadr City, a militia stronghold, and detained three people, witnesses said.
Elsewhere, a U.S. soldier from the 2nd Infantry Division's Stryker Brigade was killed and a soldier from the Army's Task Force Olympia was wounded Saturday in a mortar attack on a coalition base in the northern city of Mosul, the U.S. command said in a statement.
In Saturday's fighting in Basra, groups of al-Mahdi Army fighters set up makeshift blockades of rocks and burning tires. A group of gunmen assaulted the governor's building, and British troops moved in to reinforce the guards and take control of the building.
British armored vehicles pursued large numbers of gunmen, and when they reached the cramped alleys of some of the poorer neighborhoods, the British traded gunfire with al-Mahdi Army fighters.
Residents kept their children home from school, and many city stores were shuttered.