NAJAF, 4 April 2003 — After battling pro-Baghdad loyalists, US troops moved into the center of Iraq’s holy city of Najaf yesterday, bolstered by an edict from a top local Shiite leader urging people not to interfere with them.
US officers said they believed most of the Fedayeen paramilitary fighters loyal to President Saddam Hussein had dropped their equipment and fled — but that a few were still in the city putting up a fight.
“Ideally, we would kill them all,” Colonel Joseph Anderson, a brigade commander of the 101st Airborne Division, said. “But if they choose to change their mind and flee, there’s not much we can do.”
The US military said a senior Shiite leader, Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani, who had been held under house arrest by Saddam’s government, had ordered local people in a “fatwa” not to interfere with the US-led invasion troops.
“We believe this is a very significant turning point and another indicator that the Iraqi regime is approaching its end,” Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks told reporters in Qatar.
A Reuters correspondent in Baghdad just one week ago saw a fatwa issued by Sistani still pinned to the door of a main Shiite mosque in the capital saying Iraqis would “stand together against any invasion”.
In London, the Al-Khoei foundation confirmed the ayatollah’s new ruling and said that until now his followers had been “confused” over whether to fight the US forces.
The head of a leading Iraqi Shiite opposition group, Ayatollah Mohammed Bakr Al-Hakim, has called on his fellow Iraqis to fight neither for, nor against Saddam’s troops.
“Now Iraqis are caught between Saddam Hussein’s forces and the occupation forces. This is why I urge all Iraqis not to get involved in the fighting. They should not side, either with Saddam’s forces, or with the US-led forces,” said the leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) in an interview published yesterday in the Egyptian weekly Al-Ahram.
The group also called on Muslims worldwide to help save sacred tombs in the holy cities of Najaf and Karbala from Iraqi troops using them as bases.
It accused the Iraqi regime of positioning its troops in and around holy sites to draw US fire, incidents which it could then use to inflame Islamic sentiment.
Najaf, 160 km south of Baghdad, is one of Iraq’s most important religious centers and home to the revered gold-domed Ali Mosque, which is said to contain the tomb of Imam Ali ibn Abi Talib.
Some Najaf residents appeared alarmed by the actions of the US troops. CNN footage showed soldiers trying to calm a crowd who apparently thought they were planning to seize the mosque.
US military sources said one of the two brigades of the 101st Airborne in Najaf had been in negotiations with Sistani about how to govern Najaf in the absence of pro-Saddam forces.
Earlier, mortars, rockets and sporadic gunfire had echoed before dawn before US soldiers fanned out on house-to-house missions to search and secure poor neighborhoods. “Every building can hold a surprise. It is extremely resource-intensive and it takes a lot of time,” said Captain J.P. Swoopes.
Soldiers said they had found sizeable caches of rocket-propelled grenades, assault rifles and multiple-launch rocket systems in searches of homes on Wednesday.
A mine-making factory was found at the local university, US officers said, and in a sign of continued resistance, minefields that had been cleared following Wednesday’s attack were found to be planted with new mines yesterday.
Dozens of suspected Saddam Fedayeen militia and ruling Baath Party activists were captured. There were no reports of US casualties. Soldiers were looking especially for pick-ups or flat-bed trucks which could be used as “technicals” — battle wagons with machine-guns or anti-aircraft cannon mounted on the back.
