BAGHDAD, 10 August 2004 — A defiant Moqtada Sadr vowed to fight to death, till the “last drop of blood” in his body yesterday as fighting engulfed Najaf and the threat of attack halted output from Iraq’s southern oilfields, sending world prices to record highs.
“I will defend Najaf until my last drop of blood,” the fiery cleric vowed from the Imam Ali Mosque, as mortar and machine-gun fire rocked the central city for a fifth straight day. “I am an enemy of America and America is my enemy until the day of the last judgment,” he said, rejecting calls by interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi for his men to lay down their arms and leave the city.
Artillery and tank fire, backed by air power, battered Najaf where Sadr’s Mehdi Army were hunkered down in the vast cemetery and around the city-center mosque, a militia stronghold since his spring uprising against foreign troops.
Fighting eased briefly only for medics to evacuate casualties, provincial Gov. Adnan Al-Zorfi told AFP.
Defense Minister Hazem Shaalan warned that the Iraqi Army could join the offensive to “crush” the militia and a senior US official said the Marines had been given permission to enter the mosque to conduct their operation. “But we have not done it as of now,” the spokesman said.
In the main southern city of Basra, a British soldier was killed in clashes with insurgents, the Defense Ministry announced in London.
Security was stepped up across Iraq’s southern oilfields, the only source of exports since an attack on a key pipeline artery to Turkey halted limited deliveries from the main northern oilfields last week.
The halt sent New York crude to an all-time high. Light sweet crude for delivery in September surged $1.02 to $44.97 a barrel early afternoon, thundering past the previous record, set Friday, of $44.77.
A video purporting to show a police general kidnapped by Sadr’s militia in a bid to force the release of captured fighters was shown on Al-Jazeera television. The Interior Ministry admitted that a policeman had been abducted from a police station in Sadr City, but insisted he was not a high ranking officer.
Elsewhere, a suicide bomber blew up a car in Baladruz, near the restive city of Baqubah, northeast of Baghdad, killing six Iraqis and wounding 16, including an official in the local provincial government, police said.
A website said militants loyal to Al-Qaeda’s alleged Iraq commander, Abu Mussab Al-Zarqawi, had claimed the bombing.
Against the backdrop of continued violence, Ahmed Chalabi, prominent politician and disgraced Pentagon darling, said he would return to Baghdad from Tehran “in a few days” to challenge an arrest warrant.
Speaking to AFP, he dismissed the fraud allegations against him as “outrageous, ridiculous and politically motivated lies”.
His nephew, Salem Chalabi, head of the special tribunal set to try ousted President Saddam Hussein, told the BBC that he would also return to face a murder charge which he said was a deliberate ploy to discredit the court. Both will be arrested the moment they set foot in Iraq, Zuhair Al-Maliky, the judge who issued warrants against them, said.
Meanwhile, Iran said it was working frantically to secure the release of one of its diplomats “detained” by a group in Iraq for allegedly stirring sectarian strife and for activities outside his diplomatic duties.
— Additional input from agencies
