BAGHDAD, 13 August 2004 — US troops backed by tanks and aircraft seized the heart of the city of Najaf yesterday after fierce clashes with a Shiite militia. In the southern town of Kut, scores died when US planes bombed it Wednesday night.

Warplanes and helicopters pounded militia positions in a cemetery next to the Imam Ali Mosque in Najaf while US forces stormed the home of cleric Moqtada Sadr. Sadr was believed to be holed up in the mosque along with hundreds of his Mehdi Army.

Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi urged the militiamen to lay down their arms and leave the mosque.

A US assault on the mosque could spark a firestorm for Allawi. “This government calls upon all the armed groups to drop their weapons and rejoin society. We call upon all the armed men to evacuate the holy shrine and not to violate its holiness,” Allawi said in a statement read by Defense Minister Hazem Al-Shalan

Shalan insisted that only Iraqi police and national guard would enter the mosque and that it would be off-limits to US troops. Asked if Iraqi forces would storm the mosque, he said: “God willing, we will take the adequate measures that will serve the shrine, our people and Najaf’s sanctity.

“But I will not get into the details right now of how we would do it.”

Late in the afternoon, US warplanes bombed targets near Sadr’s house as Marines battled militiamen in the area.

Marines also blocked entry to the Imam Ali Mosque.

In the southern city of Kut, heavy overnight US bombing killed 84 people and wounded nearly 180 others. “There were 84 people killed and 176 wounded,” said Qassim Al-Mayahi, head of Al-Zahra Hospital in Kut.

Many of the dead and wounded were women and children, said another official at the hospital.

Police Col. Salam Fakhri said the bombing started at 1 a.m. and lasted until 3 a.m. “The bombing was concentrated in Al-Sharkia district as the US military felt there were a lot of militiamen in that area. It also has an office of Sadr,” he said.

Hours after the bombings, militiamen attacked and set ablaze Al-Balda police station in central Kut, killing one policeman and wounding nine others, said police Lt. Waqar Bashir.

The Interior Ministry said police arrested nearly 100 members of Sadr’s Mehdi Army in Kut yesterday.

The country’s top Sunni Muslim body warned the security forces against supporting the US military in Najaf. The Association of Muslim Scholars issued a fatwa forbidding Muslims from offering any support to the “forces of occupation.”

“It is forbidden for any Muslim to cooperate with the occupation forces and killing their own brothers and fellow citizens,” it said.

“Iraqi police and members of civil defense (national guards) should fear God’s punishment and wrath of the people as they battle with the occupation and participate in the shedding of their brothers’ blood.”

Calling the Najaf fight an act of “genocide” by the US forces, the association said the clashes in the city were against both Shariah and civil laws. “It is affecting the holy Muslim values and the shrines. It makes thousands of women and children leave the city.”

Arab states and Iran called for a halt to fighting in Najaf. Egypt urged the Iraqi and US troops to employ dialogue instead of force in Najaf, and Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said the world should intervene quickly to “prevent the massacre of defenseless Iraqi people.”

Iraq’s top Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani, who left Najaf for London for treatment as the fighting began, said in a statement that his office is exerting efforts to put an end to the crisis. Lebanon’s most senior Shiite cleric criticized the Iraqi government for allowing the American offensive in a city revered across the Shiite world. In Cairo, Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa warned that the violation of sacred Muslim places could have “serious repercussions.”

As news of the Najaf offensive filtered in, thousands of Shiites took to the streets in Basra and the Baghdad district of Sadr City to protest.

— Additional input from agencies