BAGHDAD, 8 August 2004 — Iraq’s interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi invited Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr to run in the country’s first free elections in decades, as sporadic clashes rumbled on between US forces and his militiamen yesterday.

Extending an olive branch after US Marines and Iraqi security forces pounded Sadr’s Mehdi Army for two days in Najaf and Baghdad, Allawi invited the fiery cleric to stand for election.

The prime minister’s US-backed interim government is due to disband when Iraq holds poll scheduled for January 2005.

“I invite Moqtada Sadr to participate in elections next year,” Allawi told reporters. The prime minister said he had received “positive signals” about Sadr running but did not elaborate.

US planes flew over Najaf throughout the day. Gunfire and mortar and rocket blasts grew less frequent by early afternoon, while an ultimatum for Sadr’s militia to leave the area expired at 6 p.m.

Pummeled in Sadr’s spring uprising against foreign troops, hundreds of terrified Najafis have fled their homes to escape the latest fighting.

The US military has said it has killed 300 insurgents in the city alone during the recent fighting — although Sadr aides insist no more than nine militiamen have died.

Combined tolls from medics put the number of dead at 76 and more than 300 wounded in fighting which spread to Baghdad and other southern Shiite cities.

Allawi also said an amnesty for low-level insurgent supporters had been signed into law. The law, due to have been announced in July, would “allow citizens to rejoin civil society... instead of wasting their lives pointlessly toward a lost cause,” the prime minister said.

His government has also ordered pan-Arab television channel Al-Jazeera to close its offices in Baghdad for a month on grounds of “inciting hatred and problems and racial tensions”. Al-Jazeera has frequently broadcast videotapes put together by kidnappers of foreign hostages snatched in Iraq.

But one such tape which allegedly showed a US hostage being executed by a militant group, excerpts of which were broadcast by the channel’s rival Al-Arabiya, turned out to be a hoax.

Meanwhile, the United Nations offered its help yesterday to try to stop the Najaf fighting. The UN said in a statement that it “is ready to extend its facilitating role to the current crisis, if this would be helpful.”

The statement said UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, urged that force be used only as a “last resort” and called “for every effort to be made, even at this late hour, to work out a cease-fire and peaceful solution.”

The new UN chief envoy for Iraq, veteran Pakistani diplomat Ashraf Jehangir Qazi, will go to Baghdad this month along with a small team to re-establish a permanent UN presence.

Five US Marines have been killed and 12 wounded in Najaf province in the clashes. Another US soldier was killed in an ambush in western Baghdad.

Allawi said 1,200 militiamen have been captured, but Najaf police said they had no orders to arrest Sadr himself.

Echoing pledges from government officials in Baghdad, police Gen. Ghaleb El-Jazairi ruled out any possibility of truce talks, two months after a June cease-fire quelled Sadr’s first uprising.

In Baghdad, seven people were killed and nearly 30 wounded in the slum of Sadr City as US patrols and Iraqi National Guard positions came under attack from Sadr’s Mehdi Army, medics said.

A Turkish truck driver has also been snatched by militants and his company has announced it was quitting Iraq.

A US military position near the fortified Green Zone area in central Baghdad was hit by several projectiles last night without causing damage or casualties, a military spokesman said.

“Six to seven explosions hit a forward operating base at the Green Zone, but there was no damage or casualties to personnel whatsoever,” said the spokesman, without providing further details.

Meanwhile, the Indian government said that seven hostages from India, Kenya and Egypt who were taken in Iraq were set to be released — but the Iraqi negotiator in the crisis rejected the claim.

“Face-to-face negotiations have taken place,” Indian minister E. Ahmed told reporters in New Delhi. “The way has reportedly been cleared for the release of the hostages.”

But in Iraq, Sheikh Hisham Al-Dulaymi, who’s been working as negotiator since the seven truck drivers were kidnapped on June 21, said he had had no instructions from the kidnappers.

— Additional input from agencies