BAGHDAD, 6 August 2004 — Followers of Shiite cleric Moqtada Al-Sadr fought fierce battles with US troops and Iraqi forces in at least three Iraqi towns. They shot down a US helicopter and killed a US Marine. In clashes that continued as night fell, 16 people were killed. They included seven civilians and eight Sadr fighters. Scores were injured.

The clashes threatened to reignite a Shiite uprising in April and May.

The fighting in Najaf was the heaviest. The US military said it estimated six of Sadr’s fighters were killed in Najaf, and British forces said they killed two militiamen in the southern city of Basra after an attack by Sadr’s men.

Sadr’s men also fought with US troops in the Baghdad neighborhood of Sadr City, wounding seven American soldiers, the US military said. They also attacked Iraqi officials in the southern city of Ammara.

The clashes were the worst flare-up in fighting between authorities and Sadr’s forces since a series of truces in May ended weeks of violence.

“The cease-fire is over because of the actions of the occupation forces, and the situation has started to deteriorate,” said Sheikh Abdul Hadi Al-Daraji, a spokesman for Sadr in Baghdad.

Guerrillas attacked a US convoy near Najaf with a rocket-propelled grenade and small arms fire, killing the American soldier and wounding five, the US military said.

It said the crew of the downed helicopter in Najaf were wounded and evacuated. Sadr’s aides said the cleric’s Mehdi Army militia had shot down the aircraft.

In Sadr City, insurgents fired on a US patrol, triggering a gunbattle, said Maj. Philip Smith, a spokesman for the U.S. 1st Cavalry Division. Al-Daraji said the fighting broke out in Baghdad because of the violence in Najaf and escalating tensions between US forces and Sadr’s loyalists throughout the country.

In Ammara, an appeal for Mahdi Army members to mobilize rang out through mosque loudspeakers; militants took to the streets, shooting at government buildings and blocking off roads, witnesses said

In Basra, the Sadr militiamen were killed when they ambushed a British patrol. Earlier, the Mahdi Army threatened attacks on British patrols in Basra after a deadline to free four of Sadr’s men detained two days earlier passed.

Also yesterday, a suicide car bombing at a police station in Mahawil, 85 km south of Baghdad, killed five people and wounded 27, the Interior Ministry said. A pair of attackers dressed in police uniforms opened fire at guards outside the police station while a third barreled toward the station in a vehicle filled with explosives and blew up, the ministry said.

The bombing appeared to signal a new level of coordination in insurgent attacks on police, whom they see as collaborators with US forces.

Turkey’s Foreign Ministry said Iraqi militants have killed a Turkish truck driver and two more are missing. A ministry official said Osman Alisan’s body had been identified in a hospital in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul. He said it was not clear whether the two missing drivers had been taken hostage by militants.

There was no new word on the fate of three Indians, three Kenyans and an Egyptian held by kidnappers who have threatened to behead them one by one. The kidnappers want the Kuwaiti firm that employs the men to stop doing business in Iraq and to pay compensation to the victims of US strikes in Fallujah.

Agence France Presse quoted a source close to Kuwait and Gulf Link Transport Company as saying the firm was now negotiating a ransom amount to buy the drivers’ freedom. “The argument is over how much,” the unidentified source was quoted as saying.

— Additional input from agencies