BAGHDAD, 11 August 2004 — US forces used loudspeakers to urge the defiant Shiite militia to surrender and civilians to get away from the battle zone as they pounded the fighters from the air and ground in Najaf yesterday.

US warplanes attacked militia positions at sunset near the city’s ancient Shiite cemetery, as fighting raged for a sixth consecutive day between Marines and gunmen loyal to cleric Moqtada Sadr, witnesses said.

Plumes of smoke rose from the cemetery, where Sadr’s Mehdi Army has dug in and stored caches of weapons. Marines have thrown a tight cordon around the cemetery and the Imam Ali Mosque but have yet to make a full assault on fighters holed up in the sites, a move that would enrage Iraq’s majority Shiites.

The fighting is the toughest test yet for the six-week-old administration of interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, who is also struggling with a spate of kidnappings aimed at pressuring foreign forces and firms to leave Iraq.

A website carried a videotape yesterday purporting to show the beheading in Iraq of a man identified as an “Egyptian spy” working with US forces.

But in a relief for the cash-strapped government, Iraq resumed full oil production in its southern oilfields after quickly repairing a pipeline valve blown up on Monday by saboteurs, an Iraqi oil official said.

The official said both export lines from the fields in the Basra region now were exporting. The closure of one of the pipelines on Monday sent world oil prices to fresh record highs.

Meanwhile, Allawi gave the party of disgraced Pentagon favorite Ahmed Chalabi 24 hours to leave its Baghdad headquarters.

An Interior Ministry spokesman insisted that similar eviction orders would be issued to parties which he said had seized state property after the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime in 2003, but acknowledged that this was the first. An official from Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress party charged that the order was part of a continuing conspiracy against the group, after its leader was charged with banknote forgery late last week.

The Shiite uprising in several cities across central and southern Iraq, the second in four months, has killed and wounded hundreds. Sadr’s militia attacked an Iraqi police checkpoint in Najaf, killing and wounding several uniformed men, one witness said.

Clashes also broke out in a Shiite Baghdad suburb called Sadr City as fighters brazenly ignored a curfew order.

Col. Anthony Haslam, commanding officer of the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit in Najaf, warned the militia to stop using areas around the Imam Ali Mosque, and the cemetery as a launch pad for attacks.

“We will not allow them to continue to desecrate this sacred site, using it as an insurgent base of operations. There will be no sanctuary for thugs and criminals in Najaf,” Haslam said.

The Health Ministry said 10 people had been killed and 104 wounded in fighting over the past 24 hours in Baghdad, including Sadr City. An official said he had no toll from Najaf.

Allawi has ordered Sadr’s men to leave Najaf but the young firebrand cleric who appeals to poor Shiite youth with his anti-American rhetoric responded with defiance on Monday, saying he would keep resisting and never leave his hometown.

The fighting has buried a two-month cease-fire with US forces and appears to have stalled efforts by Allawi to draw Sadr into the country’s political transition.

In between fighting, Marines broadcast messages through loudspeakers, urging militiamen to surrender and civilians to steer clear of the area.

In another sign of Iraq’s lawlessness, the chief of Allawi’s party in the volatile Sunni city of Ramadi west of Baghdad, who went missing two days ago, was found dead, family members said. The killing comes ahead of a major political gathering this weekend when 1,000 Iraqis from across the country will choose a national council to oversee Allawi’s government.

The event, scheduled for around Aug. 15, was already under a cloud because of precarious security when it was delayed in late July to give more time for preparations.

The threat of abduction hangs over foreigners in Iraq. The videotape posted yesterday was purportedly made by the Tawhid and Jihad Group of Al-Qaeda ally Abu Mussab Al-Zarqawi and showed the Egyptian hostage giving his name as Mohammed Mutawalli and saying he helped US forces.

Masked men were then seen to push him to the ground and decapitate him with a knife. Around 20 foreigners remain in the hands of kidnappers, although yesterday the family of a Lebanese businessman held hostage said he had been released.

— Additional input from agencies